The Biden administration debuted a sweeping nationwide operation going after the criminal organizations that smuggle drugs and people across the southern border and throughout the United States.
The move is a significant action that is being taken nearly three months after President Joe Biden took office, during which time the number of families, adults, and children coming across the southern border without permission has sharply risen.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced Tuesday that his department and the State Department have launched Operation Sentinel, with the intent of breaking up the organizations that earn billions of dollars every year from smuggling people and drugs, including fentanyl, into the country from Mexico.
“Today’s announcement will enable the Department of Homeland Security and our partners to disrupt criminal smuggling enterprises and ensure that they cannot prey on vulnerable people, including migrants, [through] the actions we will take over the coming months,” said Mayorkas in a call with reporters Tuesday morning.
Federal agencies involved in Operation Sentinel may use sanctions against individuals who work for the criminal organizations or take other actions, including revoking travel documents and freezing financial assets.
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The three DHS agencies, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, will have representatives in the operation, as well as the State Department and the Justice Department’s Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Mayorkas said it was part of the government’s “humanitarian obligations” to try to make it as hard as possible for smugglers to operate.
“The same people that may begin as a case of migrant smuggling may then transform into one of trafficking,” said acting ICE Director Tae Johnson. “Migrants are particularly vulnerable to becoming victims of trafficking. The victims face a number of inhumane situations, including prostitution, domestic servitude, and child exploitation.”
CBP personnel have rescued more than 4,600 people, primarily while coming across the southern border, since the start of fiscal year 2021 in October, according to acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller.
The DEA announced simultaneously on Tuesday the renewal of an initiative to stop fentanyl from being smuggled into and throughout the U.S. Under the Biden administration, the DEA will continue its Project Wave Breaker, which targets Mexican transnational criminal organizations, which are the leading suppliers and distributors of drugs that contain fentanyl.
“While a major entry point for fentanyl is the Southwest border, the cartels are spreading their poison into communities across the Nation,” said DEA acting Administrator D. Christopher Evans.
A statement from the DEA identified the Mexican-based Sinaloa Cartel as having “capitalized on the opioid epidemic and prescription drug misuse and abuse in the United States, flooding communities with illicit fentanyl and driving the record-setting rates of overdose deaths.” More than 87,000 people in the U.S. died last year from a drug overdose, the most in a year. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is created in a lab and is 50 times stronger than heroin. Deaths involving these manmade synthetic opioids rose 60% in fiscal 2021 compared to 2020.
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The number of fentanyl-laced pills seized by federal law enforcement at the southern border rose nearly 90% from the beginning of 2019 to the end of 2020. These illegitimate pills can be so strong that the DEA found an average of 1 in 4 were potent enough to kill the user. As part of Project Wave Breaker last year, the DEA seized 2,316 kilograms of fentanyl. One kilogram of fentanyl can contain 500,000 potentially fatal doses, putting the DEA 2020 seizure at potentially preventing more than a billion lethal doses from making it onto the streets.
