Ron DeSantis wants suspected drug smugglers at the US-Mexico border to be shot dead. Nikki Haley promises to send special forces into Mexico. Vivek Ramaswamy has accused Mexico’s leader of treating drug cartels as his “sugar daddy” and says that if he is elected president, “there will be a new daddy in town.” Donald Trump, who has long shaped his Republican rhetoric on the border, has often blamed Mexico for problems in the US and promises new uses of military force and covert action if he returns to the White House. Many of the GOP presidential candidates say they would carry out potential acts of war against Mexico in response to the trafficking of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, the AP reports.
More than 75,000 people in the US died last year of overdoses of synthetic opioids, a figure more than 20 times higher than a decade ago. The candidates’ antagonism toward Mexico is welcomed by some families that have lost loved ones to fentanyl and have argued that the US has not done enough to address the crisis. But analysts and nonpartisan experts warn that military force is not the answer and instead fuels the racism and xenophobia that undermine efforts to stop drug trafficking. “You’ve got politicking on this side. And then on the Mexican side of the border, you’ve got a president who is turning a blind eye to what’s going on in Mexico and who has completely gutted bilateral collaboration with the United States,” said Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico’s ambassador to the US from 2007 to 2013. “That’s a very combustible mixture.”
Andrea Thomas’ daughter died at age 32 after taking half of a counterfeit pill laced with fentanyl that looked like her prescription pills for abdominal pain. Thomas started the foundation Voices for Awareness in Grand Junction, Colorado, to raise the alarm about fentanyl. Thomas says people she knows are interested in what the candidates are proposing and feel that President Biden’s administration has not properly responded to the crisis. In a letter to the presidential candidates, Thomas and an assembly of other groups urge the politicians to do “all that can be done” to stop the manufacturing and smuggling of the drug. “This drug is like no drug we have ever seen before,” she said. “We need some strong measures. We have no more time to waste.”
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DeSantis has promised that people suspected of smuggling drugs across the southern border would end up “stone cold dead.” That raises the prospect of border agents being authorized to shoot people before any investigation into whether those people were carrying drugs. US government data undercuts the claim that people seeking asylum and other border crossers are responsible for drug trafficking, per the AP. About 90% of fentanyl seizures were made at official land crossings, not between crossings where people entered illegally. At a hearing in July, James Mandryck of Customs and Border Protection said 73% of fentanyl seizures at the border since the previous October were smuggling attempts carried out by US citizens, with the rest being done by Mexican citizens.
(Read more fentanyl stories.)
Read More: GOP Rivals Propose Acts of War Against Mexico Over Fentanyl
