Tallahassee, Florida - Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is raising alarms after outlining a hardline border policy which could see a significant uptick in instances of deadly force against migrants.

DeSantis doubled down on claims that border patrol officers should be using "lethal force" against drug cartels at the Southern border during an appearance on NBC, broadcast on Monday.

The 2024 presidential hopeful was pressed on how law enforcement would distinguish cartel members from migrants and asylum seekers.

"Same way a police officer would know," DeSantis responded. "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."

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He added that US agents would have "rules of engagement" guiding operations, brushing aside concerns that migrant adults and children might be put at risk.

DeSantis previously said during a June visit to the border at Eagle Pass, Texas, that "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."

Experts and immigrants' rights advocates have warned that modeling border enforcement on police or military forces could result in untold numbers of innocent lives lost.

Mapping Police Violence has found that US police killed at least 1,201 people in 2022 and have already killed at least 602 people so far this year.

Meanwhile, Iraq Body Count puts the number of civilian deaths between 2003 and 2011 directly caused by the US-led coalition at 15,162, or 13%.

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DeSantis' calls for deadly force constitute a familiar GOP election tactic of casting Democrats as weak on border policy, even though the Biden administration has instituted severe asylum restrictions dubbed cruel and inhumane by rights advocates.

The Florida Republican, a former US Navy lawyer who was deployed to Iraq in 2007 and also worked at the infamous Guantánamo Bay detention facility, has touted his experience as a tough-on-crime veteran on the campaign trail.