Biden’s Broken Border is a five-part Washington Examiner series highlighting the border security records President Joe Biden has shattered in less than two years in office and the trickle-down effects that the crisis is having on the United States. Part One looked at how Biden already broke the record for migrant apprehensions in 2022. Part Two examined the dramatic shift in demographics of migrants crossing the border illegally. Part Three showed the consequences of children crossing the border alone in unprecedented numbers. Part Four looked at the record number of migrants dying while attempting to enter the United States. And Part Five, below, examines the deadly fentanyl crisis that has rocked communities deep within the country.
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Seizures of fentanyl, a manmade drug that is so deadly that three grains can put a person in a coma, have ballooned from practically zero a decade ago to a record high under President Joe Biden.
Federal police at the nation’s borders are making massive seizures, but they simply cannot wall off the United States from drug smugglers eager to flood every corner of the country with fentanyl.
“It’s a constant problem,” said Guadalupe H. Ramirez, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s director of field operations for the Tucson, Arizona, region, adding that Mexican cartels “flood the port” knowing that despite what his officers manage to interdict, plenty will get past them.
EXPLAINED: TITLE 42, THE POLICY AT THE CENTER OF THE BORDER DEBATE
The surge has had fatal consequences. U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 45 years old are more likely to die from consuming fentanyl than they are to die as the result of a car crash, the coronavirus, a heart attack, suicide, or a terrorist attack. Fentanyl overdoses were a driving force behind the record-high 100,000 overdose deaths last year.
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The emergence of fentanyl marked the third wave of the opioid epidemic following the abuse of prescription painkillers and then a rise in heroin use that prompted major concern during the Obama administration. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency that inspects people and goods seeking admission at the nation’s borders, seized just two pounds of fentanyl in fiscal year 2013.
In 2016, when seizures were under 1,000 pounds, national health leaders approached the Obama administration to warn that fentanyl was becoming a drug epidemic, the likes of which had never been seen before, according to a Washington Post investigation. It was not declared a public health emergency until 2017, after President Donald Trump took office.
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Nevertheless, the problem grew, and a record 11,200 pounds of fentanyl were seized in 2021 and this year has blown past that record. With one month left in the government’s fiscal year, more than 12,900 pounds have been seized, including 2,300 in August, the most ever in a month.
The Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels in Mexico know it is a “numbers game,” Ramirez said. Six million cars pass through Arizona ports annually. Passenger vehicles, not commercial trucks, are primarily where they find fentanyl hidden in seat cushions, gas tanks, and bumpers. No spot on a vehicle has not had drugs concealed in it, Ramirez said.
The newest trend in fentanyl production is a type called “rainbow fentanyl.” Nogales, Arizona, has become ground zero for the seizures of these colorful pills hidden in vehicles and on pedestrians, smuggled by hiding the pills inside the vagina for women and the rectum for men.
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“The first time that we saw those rainbow-colored, all the different colors, obviously, it was a huge concern,” said Ramirez. “They’re trying to make it so that younger people will be interested in it.”
The impact on U.S. communities has already been widespread, but the threat of candy-looking fentanyl ahead of the Halloween season has spooked Republicans.
Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Banks of Indiana announced at a roundtable on Sept. 15 a new bill that would further penalize any person involved in the production or distribution of rainbow fentanyl, specifically if the fentanyl is marketed or made to look like candy and beverages that would appeal to children and teenagers.
With less than two months until the midterm elections, Banks sent members a memo on Sept. 16, urging conservatives to highlight the “cruel reality” that drug smugglers have free rein at the southern border.
“Joe Biden’s open border policies have fueled the fentanyl crisis,” Banks wrote in the memo.
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In Montana, Attorney General Austin Knudsen has a state narcotics bureau and intelligence office tracking fentanyl overdoses and deaths, particularly how the fentanyl smuggled across the southern border has made its way up U.S. highways into Montana communities. This year, Montana has taken off the streets 58 times as many pounds of fentanyl than all of 2019. Fatalities jumped from four in 2017 to 49 in 2021.
Montana was one of 18 states and a U.S. territory that sent President Joe Biden a letter on Sept. 15, urging him to classify fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.
“Treating this solely as a narcotics control problem has failed to curb the proliferation of increasing quantities of chemicals that can cause a mass casualty event. Your own DEA Administrator has called fentanyl ‘the deadliest threat [the DEA] ha[s] ever seen.’ We should treat it as such,” the attorneys general wrote.
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For Ramirez and the tens of thousands of customs officers nationwide, the war on drugs is not only about preventing a highly lethal and illegal substance from getting into the country — it is about surviving a day on the job.
“Before, when we would identify a compartment [in a vehicle,] we would just tear into it,” Ramirez said. “Now, you have to put protective equipment on. You have to take your time, and you use different tools to really safely dismantle a compartment and get the stuff out.”
