Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who you may remember was a Guantanamo Bay torture enthusiast before he launched his current political career, has been floating a new border security plan that manages to be more murderous and criminal than Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's deployment of nets, buoys, razor wire, and large saw blades meant to snag and injure crossing migrants.
DeSantis simply wants Border Patrol to shoot to kill "cartels" crossing over the southern border. In an NBC News interview that aired Monday, DeSantis was finally asked to explain how agents were supposed to know which border crossers were drug smugglers from "the cartels" and which were legal asylum-seekers or other migrants.
Guantanamo torture boy was clear in his answer: He really doesn't give a shit.
In an NBC interview broadcast on Monday night, the Republican Florida governor was asked about a campaign-trail promise: “If cartels are trying to run product into this country, they’re going to end up stone-cold dead.”
“How do you know you’re using deadly force against the right people?” his interviewer, Dasha Burns, asked.
“Same way a police officer would know,” DeSantis said. “Same way somebody operating in Iraq would know.
“You know, these people in Iraq at the time, they all looked the same. You didn’t know who had a bomb strapped to them. So those guys have to make judgments.”
Police officers are quite infamous for not knowing who to shoot and who not to shoot, which if Ron might remember has been the subject of a great fucking many scandals, controversies, and new political movements in the last few years.
And none of the people crossing the Rio Grande have "a bomb strapped to them," so even by this enormous fuckwit’s wartime definition, the percentage of border crossers deserving summary execution is a nice fat zero.
Republicans are obsessed with turning the southern border into a war zone, and DeSantis' bold idea is indistinguishable from that of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups that have similarly demanded the right to indiscriminately shoot border crossers and let God sort it out.
DeSantis is, of course, playing the same game that Abbott is. Given that the vast majority of border crossers desperate enough to risk the crossing are asylum seekers and refugees, Abbott’s deadly border traps will kill and maim more migrants unaware of their existence than it ever will actual drug smugglers carefully plotting their entry points.
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The Republican base loves this, which is why DeSantis has his “shoot to kill” plan. The point isn’t to deter immigration or hamper cartel drug operations. The point is to kill and maim poor, desperate migrants.
The Guardian quotes a law professor to appropriately note that "DeSantis is really being quite openly murderous" on this one, which has increasingly been a theme of his campaign. Proposing to summarily execute anyone caught crossing the border if they look like drug smugglers is an obscenity that should disqualify the speaker from office. Ron does not understand our legal systems, or asylum laws, or how to not be a damn Nazi.
A kicker in all of this? DeSantis was brown-nosing the Republican base just weeks ago with an embarrassing monologue on how he wishes he could have "been there with Jesus' disciples" 2,000 years ago. No doubt Ron wanted to personally ask Jesus about his idea to kill sketchy-looking migrants on sight, and buddy, I think we are all wishing we could witness the beatdown that would result from that.
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