Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday detailed his bold plan to address the fentanyl crisis in America if he becomes president, including authorizing the use of deadly force against drug cartels.
He said on Day One he would declare the issue a national emergency and would send the military to the border.
“I am going to stop the invasion cold. I am going to deport people who came in illegally,” he said, “and I’m even going to build the border wall and have Mexico pay for it, like Donald Trump promised.”
How would he accomplish that? Acknowledging that Mexico wouldn’t willingly cough up the money, he said he’d “impose fees on the remittances that foreign workers send to foreign countries. We will raise billions of dollars.”
Next, DeSantis said he’d “build the wall” and “designate the cartels to be foreign terrorist organizations or something similar to that, and we will authorize the use of deadly force, we'll have maritime operations to interdict precursor chemicals going into Mexico.”
Any member of a drug cartel trying to sneak fentanyl across the border would pay with their life, he added.
“That’s going to be the last thing they do,” DeSantis said. “We’re going to shoot them stone cold dead."
.@RonDeSantis on tackling the fentanyl crisis:
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) November 9, 2023
"We're declaring it a national emergency on day one... we're going to authorize the use of deadly force... if someone in the drug cartels is sneaking fentanyl across the border when I'm president, that's going to be the last thing… pic.twitter.com/oBfoTbTF3q
Since 2018, more than a quarter of a million Americans have died from fentanyl overdose, a number that has climbed each year.