Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) suggested adopting the tactics of infamous Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in dealing with an illegal immigrant charged with assaulting police officers.
Collins was responding to a post on X from fellow Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY), who posted an image of one of six illegal immigrants who were released on bail after allegedly assaulting two New York City Police Department officers along with the suggestion that they should be handed over to Mexican drug cartels. In the photo, the man is giving two middle fingers to the camera.
The Georgia Republican one-upped him, suggesting that they should adopt the practice of death flights, a favored form of extrajudicial killing under the Pinochet regime.
“Or we could buy him a ticket on Pinochet Air for a free helicopter ride back,” Collins said.
Collins’s tweets referred to one of many methods of killing or disposing of the bodies of dissidents during the Pinochet regime and other right-wing Latin American dictators, specifically during the U.S.-backed Operation Condor, which saw a continent-wide crackdown on political opponents.
Death flights involved government soldiers or intelligence agents throwing mostly communist dissidents out of planes or helicopters, usually into large bodies of water or remote locations such as mountain ranges or jungles.
Left-wing figures were quick to condemn Collins, alleging he was calling for the extrajudicial killing of political opponents.
“I think sitting members of Congress calling for murdering people using the Pinochet regime’s preferred method of dropping them out of helicopters is really not great,” MSNBC host Chris Hayes said.
Collins was defended by both right-wing commentators who found the post funny and by a fellow congressman.
“Call me crazy, but I’m more worried a person who shouldn’t be in our country assaulted a police officer,” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) said.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Collins for comment.
Former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos announced in 2001 that at least 120 Chilean dissidents had been thrown from helicopters into “the ocean, the lakes, and the rivers of Chile.”
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The flights were often a method of execution, though sometimes they were used to dispose of bodies that had been “disappeared” by the government. Though death flights were far more common under the 1976-1983 Argentine junta, memes in right-wing online circles have led to their popular connection with the Pinochet regime.
Pinochet has gained popularity in some right-wing circles for his stabilization of Chile and harsh handling of a growing communist movement despite his human rights record. Roughly 3,000 people were killed during his 17-year rule, which started with a bloody military coup against the socialist president, Salvador Allende.
