Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) said he would be willing to use drone strikes against drug cartels in Mexico as part of “whatever force we need to defend the country.”
The Republican 2024 presidential candidate was listening to questions at an Iowa campaign event when a voter asked whether he would consider drone strikes against the cartels. “We will absolutely reserve the right if they’re invading our country and killing our people,” DeSantis responded.
UP FOR DEBATE: TRUMP, DESANTIS, AND 2024 GOP HOPEFULS’ STANCES ON ABORTION
“We will lean in against the drug cartels. … We have the right to hold them accountable, and it’s not just if they happen to come over our border. If Mexico is not going to help us with that, well, then we’re going to have to do what we have to do,” the Florida governor added, per the Hill.
Concerns over illegal immigration and crime festering at the border have been one of Republicans’ chief talking points in the lead-up to the 2024 election. DeSantis has taken perhaps the staunchest closed-border approach of all GOP presidential hopefuls.
In June, the Republican governor came out in support of allowing federal law enforcement on the southern border to use “deadly force” against dangerous criminal organizations who attempt to break into the United States.
“If the cartels are cutting through the border wall trying to run product into this country, they’re going to end up stone-cold dead as a result of that bad decision,” DeSantis said to applause while at an event in Texas.
Drug cartels and their stranglehold on power in regions of Mexico remain a problem for the United States’s southern neighbor and, consequently, the U.S. too. Lawmakers, particularly Republicans, have voiced discontent with the Mexican government’s inability to diminish their violence and influence.
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DeSantis’s wife, Casey DeSantis, joined her husband onstage at an event in Iowa City, Iowa, on Thursday, as the Republican governor searches for ways to make up ground on the front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination, former President Donald Trump.
He had already found himself in a distant second place to Trump after he declared his candidacy for president, but in recent weeks, DeSantis has seen his polling decrease, prompting him to shake up his campaign team and strategy before the first Republican presidential debate later this month.
