Ruling threatens US power as world’s high-seas drug police
MIAMI (AP) — A little-noticed federal appeals court ruling this year threatens a key weapon in the United States’ war on drugs: A decades-old law that gives the U.S. broad authority to make high-seas arrests anywhere in the world, even if the drugs aren’t bound for American shores.
It’s a law that’s used to round up and imprison hundreds of foreigners every year, mostly poor, semi-literate fishermen from Central and South America who make up the drug trade’s lowest rungs.