Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Monday proposed a number of hard-right immigration insurance policies, floating the thought of utilizing lethal power towards suspected drug traffickers and others breaking by border boundaries whereas “demonstrating hostile intent.”

“Of course you use deadly force,” Mr. DeSantis mentioned after a marketing campaign occasion on a sweltering morning in Eagle Pass, a small Texas border metropolis. “If you drop a couple of these cartel operatives trying to do that, you’re not going to have to worry about that anymore,” he added. He mentioned they’d find yourself “stone-cold dead.”

He didn’t make clear how Border Patrol officers or different legislation enforcement authorities would possibly decide which individuals crossing the border have been smuggling medication. He mentioned solely that “if someone is breaking through the border wall” whereas “demonstrating hostile intent or hostile action, you have to be able to meet that with the appropriate use of force.”

Mr. DeSantis’s proposal served as an escalation of Republican messaging on the border and was a part of a number of plans he unveiled in an effort to match the hard-line immigration stance of former President Donald J. Trump, who privately suggested shooting migrants in the legs throughout his administration.

Mr. DeSantis mentioned that if elected, he would search to tear down a few of the pillars of American immigration legislation, resembling the automated granting of citizenship to these born within the United States.

And he mentioned his administration would “fully deputize” state and native legislation enforcement officers in states like Texas to arrest and deport migrants again to Mexico — an influence now reserved for the federal authorities — and to detain migrant kids indefinitely, regardless of a courtroom order imposing strict limits on the observe. He additionally promised to finish “phony asylum claims.”

Those insurance policies are positive to enchantment to conservative voters within the Republican presidential main contest, however they’d be more likely to run into authorized roadblocks and will take a look at the bounds of presidential authority. The Constitution has been held to ensure birthright citizenship, and the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that states can’t enact their very own immigration coverage.

And whereas Mr. DeSantis argued that the nation wanted harsh new immigration guidelines as a result of the present ones have been encouraging harmful border crossings and the mistreatment of migrant kids, a few of his proposals may additionally endanger migrants, together with using “deadly force” towards individuals chopping by the border wall.

“You do it one time and they will never do it again,” he mentioned.

His marketing campaign mentioned in a news launch that he would comply with “appropriate rules of engagement” and that the principles would apply to “those trying to smuggle drugs into the United States.” (The overwhelming majority of medicine are smuggled in business autos coming throughout official ports of entry, not carried by migrants, in keeping with U.S. border authorities.)

Another plan Mr. DeSantis put ahead, which might require sure asylum seekers to attend in Mexico, was beforehand employed by Mr. Trump, drawing criticism for forcing migrants to reside in squalid tent camps the place some have been reportedly subjected to sexual assault, kidnapping and torture.

Mr. DeSantis has made immigration a centerpiece of his marketing campaign, however he has offered few specifics till now. Other coverage proposals he launched on Monday included:

• Deploying the army to “assist” Border Patrol brokers till a wall is completed.

• Cracking down on Mexican drug cartel exercise, together with by blocking precursor chemical compounds used to fabricate medication “from entering Mexican ports,” if the Mexican authorities doesn’t act to cease the cartels.

• Detaining all migrants who cross the border with out authorization till their immigration courtroom listening to date. (Such a coverage would probably require the creation of an unlimited new jail system.)

“These are ideas that have rightly been categorized for a really long time as radical and extremist,” mentioned Aron Thorn, a senior lawyer within the Beyond Borders Program of the Texas Civil Rights Project.

The coverage rollout on Monday steered that Mr. DeSantis, who’s trailing Mr. Trump by roughly 30 percentage points in nationwide polls, was attempting to outflank the previous president on immigration. Mr. DeSantis — whose “stop the invasion” language is a trademark of America’s far proper — has argued that he’s the candidate probably to enact conservative immigration insurance policies. He has accused Mr. Trump of “running to the left,” saying that “this is a different guy today than when he was running in 2015 and 2016.”

But even amongst voters who got here to see Mr. DeSantis on Monday at a cinder-block-and-steel Veterans of Foreign Wars submit in Eagle Pass, some mentioned that they remained extra inclined to vote for Mr. Trump.

“He’s Trump 2.0, but this isn’t his time,” mentioned John Sassano, 60, a retired instructor in Eagle Pass who described himself as a former Democrat. “I’d love to see him as V.P.”

Sandy Bradley, 66, a retired authorities employee, traveled with two mates from Del Rio, a close-by border city, to listen to Mr. DeSantis, shopping for festive cowboy hats at a Walmart on the way in which. “I think he will catch up,” she mentioned, including that Mr. DeSantis appeared to share her Christian values.

She added that she wished a candidate who would handle unlawful immigration and “stop all the influx.”

Mr. DeSantis went instantly from the occasion to a news convention at a ranch alongside the Rio Grande exterior city the place the state of Texas had just lately constructed fencing with concertina wire in an space the place migrants usually cross.

“This is an ongoing problem,” mentioned Ruben Garibay, who owns the ranch. Mr. Garibay, carrying a black cowboy hat and talking within the shade of a tree as the temperature neared 100 degrees Fahrenheit, mentioned he had agreed to host Mr. DeSantis however had but to make up his thoughts about which candidate to assist. “It’s a little early in the game,” he mentioned.

Mr. Trump first deployed a so-called Remain in Mexico coverage, which the Biden administration later reversed. He additionally proposed ending birthright citizenship throughout his first marketing campaign, though he failed to do so while in office, and has just lately renewed these calls as a candidate. And, after all, he ran in 2016 on constructing a wall on the southern border, a difficulty that helped propel him to the White House.

On his social media website on Monday, Mr. Trump mentioned that Mr. DeSantis’s “sole purpose in making the trip was to reiterate the fact that he would do all of the things done by me in creating the strongest Border, by far, in U.S. history.”

As governor, Mr. DeSantis final month despatched a whole lot of Florida legislation enforcement officers and Florida National Guard members to Texas, saying President Biden had did not safe the border, a repeat of a similar effort in 2021 forward of Mr. DeSantis’s re-election marketing campaign.

This 12 months, Mr. DeSantis additionally signed a invoice cracking down on undocumented immigrants that was seen as one of many harshest such measures within the nation. And he introduced a nationwide coalition of greater than 90 native sheriffs who mentioned they’d band collectively to combat gang exercise and unlawful medication that they argue are the results of the Biden administration’s border insurance policies. (Only a number of of the sheriffs are from border states.)

Some immigration analysts questioned the viability of Mr. DeSantis’s proposals, suggesting they have been pushed by the political imperatives of a presidential marketing campaign.

“The bulk of the proposal is the usual laundry list of Republican talking points that have not been successful, either in Congress or in the court of public opinion,” mentioned Louis DeSipio, a political scientist on the University of California, Irvine, citing the thought to finish birthright citizenship, amongst different proposals. “The purpose is probably not a serious policy debate but instead to focus on an issue that is a weakness for Biden and a sensitive one for Trump.”

And Jennie Murray, the president of the National Immigration Forum, a nonprofit group that advocates immigration insurance policies that handle financial and nationwide safety wants, pointed to the difficulties in really finishing up Mr. DeSantis’s plans.

“Deporting huge numbers of immigrants would be costly and extremely detrimental, especially during these times of historic labor shortages,” she mentioned.

Miriam Jordan contributed reporting from Los Angeles.