Opioids are killing tens of thousands of people each year in the United States. Even if the general public doesn’t know it, ICE is on the front lines of this devastating opioid battle. Yes, the government agency the Left loves to hate is combating the counterfeit importation of illicit opioids day in and day out.
This past week, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, sat down with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson to discuss the devastating drug crisis that is killing thousands of Americans. Portman, a member of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, knows where the drugs are coming in to the United States from China via the U.S. Postal Service. An international nexus is all that Homeland Security and the U.S. Postal Service inspectors need to team up to disrupt the impact of this opioid crisis.
This last August, ICE arrested a multinational opioid-smuggling ring responsible for two deaths in the U.S. This happened with little fanfare because the media was too focused on the Abolish ICE movement, and lawmakers were too busy comparing ICE agents to the Ku Klux Klan.
Opioids are killing Americans at a record pace and have caught the attention of President Trump. So much, in fact, that President Trump declared an opioid crisis and directed all federal executive agencies to combat this crisis.
Trump called for action, and ICE answered that call. ICE, coupled with Customs and Border Protection, took the opioid fight head on.
You would never know by watching the latest episode of “Murphy Brown” on CBS. It likened ICE to jack-booted thugs just following “government orders” as they arrested a family on Thanksgiving Day. As a former ICE supervisor, my team would not be out arresting a noncriminal family on any day, let alone a holiday.
ICE focuses on criminal aliens. They are not out searching for families or DACA recipients. This was a political hit on ICE. So is the rhetoric of newly elected politicians and those seeking to get elected.
Opioids flow into the United States over both borders and through every international airport. ICE, specifically their Homeland Security Investigations branch, investigate all international-borne investigations, from these devastating opioids to arms smugglers. Yes, their mission is that broad.
ICE is not new. It is a merger of the former U.S Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Both agencies enforced the same laws that are being enforced now, but as a merged agency. They are not new, and they are not going to be abolished, nor should they be.
Our immigration laws need to be reformed and changed. It’s wrong for celebrities, and especially for the politicians who have failed to change those laws, to take out their frustrations on the professionals in ICE who are consistently doing their job and protecting our country.
Dr. Jason Piccolo is a career federal agent, a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, former ICE supervisor, and a nationally recognized whistleblower for the 2015 release of unaccompanied alien children to criminal sponsors.
