Fentanyl surges across the southern border at an alarming rate. According to Homeland Security statistics, July’s seizures rate has surpassed the old record, and tripled June’s, this week’s new figures.
The drugs are yet another vulnerability along a U.S.-Mexico boundary already plagued by record levels of human smuggling — including 10 more terrorism suspects nabbed by the Border Patrol in July alone.
Customs and Border Protection reported seizing 2,071 pounds of fentanyl coming in from Mexico in July. That’s 60% higher than the previous record, set in April, and more than triple the 640 pounds nabbed in June.
It almost matches the amount of fentanyl taken in all 2019.
This is worrying because authorities believe seizures can be used as a measure of overall drug flow. If more drugs are caught, it means more people are getting through. This means that a large amount of illegal drugs probably crossed the border in December.
Given the deadly effects of fentanyl, which is only 2 mg per person considered sufficient to kill — July’s seizures could be enough for nearly 470million people or almost one-and-a-half doses to every American.
CBP did not comment on this article. However, federal authorities are sounding increasingly alarm about what they see at the border.
” A decade ago we didn’t know anything about fentanyl. Now it is a national emergency,” Randy Grossman (the U.S. Attorney in Southern California) said last week ahead of new CBP figures. “The quantity of fentanyl that we seize at the border is astonishing .”
Mr. Grossman is Ground Zero in the Chaos.
Of the nearly 2,100 pounds of fentanyl seized in July, two-thirds of that came through Southern California. The majority, more than 1,100 pounds was nabbed as smugglers toted it through border crossings, tucked inside cars and trucks or hidden on their bodies.
But Border Patrol agents are now capturing a growing amount as it is smuggled between border crossings or when drivers get caught at highway checkpoints further into the U.S .
San Diego are seeing the consequences.
Mr. Grossman said the county medical examiner has recorded a 2,375% increase in fentanyl-related deaths from 2016 to 2021.
Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid which is several orders of magnitude more powerful than heroin, is It’s often combined with other drugs to increase potency and reduce cost, making it more difficult to maintain addictions and overdose.
It began to seep into the illegal drug market 10 years ago. Most of it was supplied by China’s mail.
But Congress took action to clamp down on these shipments and the then-President Trump made a direct request to China’s leaders in 2018 for them to stop it.
President Xi Jinping was open to halting shipments to America, but there was something left out of the conversation.
“Xi did not agree to cease sending it to Mexico,” Senator Bill Hagerty told The Washington Times in January after a visit to the border.
These precursor ingredients were shipped from China to Mexico. There, the cartels turn them into fentanyl before smuggling the final product over the border.
Things may soon get worse.
China announced earlier in the month that it will stop cooperating with blocking shipment of fentanyl from the U.S.A as part of its retaliation for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan.
It is not clear if this will impact the flow of current flows and relieve pressure at the border.
For now the situation is still in crisis.
Critics of the administration claim that the increase in drug flows is due to an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants. The influx of illegal immigrants has created gaps at the border that have led to an overcrowding of authorities. This allows smugglers to exploit these spaces.
Agents claim that cartels will transport large numbers of migrants to the occupy agent, and then slip high-value drugs such as fentanyl down the road.
This makes seizure numbers even more concerning, stated Sen. Rob Portman, Ohio’s top Republican member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
“Only the seized fentanyl is being seized, as the vast majority of it is going undiscovered according to the DEA,” he stated.
Across the country, CBP’s heroin seizures were up 8% in July, and methamphetamine seizures were up 15%. These drugs are mainly trafficked through the borders.
For cocaine, which is less of a land-smuggled drug, seizures were down 56%.
Drugs wasn’t the only sign of danger at the border last month.
Border Patrol agents nabbed another 10 people whose names popped in the terrorist screening database, bringing the total to 66, with two months still to go in the fiscal year.
By contrast, agents recorded just 15 terrorism suspect arrests at the southern border in all of 2021, and just 11 for the four years before that combined.
CBP did not offer an explanation, however experts believe that, just as with drugs, more people will be caught if they are caught.
“Anyone who knows, or fears, that they are on the watchlist, they’re going through those holes and gaps,” Rodney Scott told The Washington Times in the summer.
He described increasing numbers as “beyond the red flares. These are rocket flashes happening .”
Immigrant rights advocates oppose tying the Fentanyl crisis with illegal immigration at South Border.
America’s Voice was a prominent activist group that claimed it was an attempt “falsely to scapegoat immigrants seeking asylum .”
“The fentanyl that has entered the country is not the responsibility of migrants, and they are also not an invading force,” stated Zachary Mueller late last month, the political director for the group.
” These dehumanizing lies have already had a substantial body count and are driving some Americans to commit grotesque acts or mass violence,” he stated.
July’s borders numbers contained some positive news.
Overall illegal crossings of people appeared to tick down, to just under 200,000.
CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus claimed credit and said it seems like the government’s efforts to discourage new immigrants are working.
” This is the second consecutive month of decreased encounters at the Southwest border. He said that although encounters remain high, it is still a positive trend. It marks the second month of fewer encounters along the Southwest border.
He cited an advertisement campaign that warned would-be migrants about the dangers involved in traveling as one factor to reducing the flow.
But his numbers from the agency suggested that things weren’t quite so bright.
The number of individuals who are unique, or have not attempted to cross the border in the past year, actually increased by 1% between June and July.
CBP often touts the unique individual number as a better sense of what’s happening at the border, given the high rate of recidivism due to the Title 42 pandemic border-closure policy.
