Ruling threatens US power as world's high-seas drug police

Source: Associated Press

Ruling threatens US power as world's high-seas drug police

By JOSHUA GOODMAN
May 5, 2022

MIAMI (AP) — Jeffri Dávila-Reyes says he’s still mystified how he ended up serving hard time in a U.S. federal prison.

His cocaine bust at sea was closer to his homeland of Costa Rica than the United States, and the few kilos of drugs he was carrying were bound for Jamaica rather than American shores.

His plight is similar to hundreds of foreigners swept up by the U.S. Coast Guard in international waters every year, most of them poor, semiliterate fishermen from Central and South America driven to smuggling with offers of more money than they’ve ever seen — in Dávila-Reyes’ case $6,000.

“Nobody can be blamed for being born poor,” he wrote in a recent letter to The Associated Press.

But now, seven years into his 10-year sentence, Dávila-Reyes’ conviction has been thrown out in a little-noticed ruling that threatens a key weapon in the United States’ war on drugs: A decades-old law that gives the U.S. broad authority to make arrests on the high seas anywhere in the world, even if the drugs aren’t bound for the U.S.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/sports-miami-florida-united-states-south-america-1b7d5dda8d4cc3bdc9d24d6cc194d892

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Opinion: 16-2089 - US v. Davila-Reyes