'We're just gonna kill people bringing drugs into our country' - Trump on cartels: Video
President Donald Trump told reporters that his administration will take direct, even lethal, action against the drug traffickers he blames for flooding the United States with narcotics.
“We have cartels that... you know, somebody came up with the word cartel. I won't tell you who that person was, but you got a lot of bad people in the cartels,” Trump said, criticising Mexico and Colombia before turning to Venezuela. “Colombia is a drug den. It's a drug den and it has been for a long time… They make cocaine at levels that we've never seen before and they sell it back and they're not going to get away with it much longer. We're not going to put up with it much longer,” he added.
Pressed by a reporter about congressional briefings and whether the U.S. would seek a formal declaration of war, Trump replied that Washington would act without necessarily asking Congress for a declaration. “I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country… we're gonna kill them, you know, they're gonna be like, dead, okay?” he said.
The president also suggested plans for the United States to take steps against narco-groups operating in the region and defended recent operations that he said had weakened criminal networks. He framed the actions as necessary to protect U.S. communities from the harms of illicit drugs, citing mass deaths tied to synthetic opioids in recent years.
The U.S. Constitution vests war powers in Congress, and international law generally requires that the use of lethal force comply with strict rules on necessity, proportionality and accountability.
This story is written and edited by the Global South World team, you can contact us here.
