“If these people were drug traffickers & deserving of death,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), a member of the House intelligence & foreign affairs cmtes, “how is it that you would pick them up & just let them go?”

#law #Trump #idiocracy #KeystoneKops

But in destroying rather than collecting #evidence, & turning the 2 survivors over to foreign governments rather than prosecuting them, they set alleged enemies free, cutting short a process that #US law enforcement has used to investigate smuggling operations & confront the criminals behind them.

#law #Trump #idiocracy #KeystoneKops

…A WaPo investigation into the Oct 16 strike reveals a gap between the admin’s tough-on-trafficking rhetoric & its actions on the high seas. #Trump has declared a “non-international armed conflict” on drug cartels. The #WhiteHouse & the #Pentagon have likened traffickers to members of al-Qaeda & the Islamic State — terrorists who wield drugs as weapons to kill Americans.

#law #idiocracy #KeystoneKops

But in transferring him to Ecuadorian custody, 3 officials said, #US forces didn’t provide any #evidence that could be used to detain him — no seized drugs, no phone or GPS records, no videos, none of the “intelligence” that led them to target his vessel.

On landing in Quito, US officials told the Ecuadorians that the transfer was a “humanitarian” repatriation, Ortega said.

Within hours, Tufiño was let go.

#law #Trump #idiocracy #KeystoneKops

Tufiño was already a known trafficker: He had pleaded guilty in #US federal court to cocaine distribution conspiracy in 2021 & served >3 years in a US prison before he was deported home to #Ecuador last year. Now the US #military had picked him up amid the wreckage of a semisubmersible vessel — a “narco sub.”

In his gang-controlled hometown, Tufiño was known as Fresco Solo, a skilled navigator they alleged was recruited by criminals to smuggle drugs north.

#law #Trump #idiocracy #KeystoneKops

In #Ecuador — a govt closely aligned with Trump on #counternarcotics enforcement — the admin had a willing partner, eager to learn what the alleged trafficker could tell them about his employers.

Tufiño, then 41, stepped off the #US #military plane at the Quito airport on the morning of Oct 18 in shackles, cut & bruised from the attack but walking on his own, acc/to Col. Carlos Ortega, then the director of anti-narcotics for Ecuador’s national police.

#law #Trump #idiocracy #KeystoneKops

Andrés Fernando Tufiño Chila was 1 of only 2 people known to have survived a US strike on a vessel that the #Trump admin alleged was smuggling drugs from #SouthAmerica. Trump had described the Ecuadorian & a fellow survivor of the Oct 16 strike in the #Atlantic Ocean as “terrorists” who would be returned to their countries of origin “for detention & prosecution.”

#law #idiocracy #KeystoneKops