Even in West Virginia, more than 1,000 miles away from the U.S. border with Mexico, state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said he sees firsthand the impact the border crisis is having on the heartland.
“Words really can’t adequately describe what all of us have experienced the last couple of days and the horrific catastrophe we’re seeing down here at the border,” Morrisey said of his trip to the Texas-Mexico border at a summit hosted by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
“Not only are undocumented aliens streaming across the border,” but so are those trafficking people and drugs “flowing into the heartland coming from the southern border,” he said. “Bodies are starting to pile up as a result of the utter failure of the [Biden] administration. And it’s time they do something about it.”
Morrisey has been leading the charge in West Virginia against an opioid crisis stemming from prescription and illicit drug overuse.
“We experience the illegal immigration problem most acutely through the explosion of fentanyl into our state,” he said. “We’re seeing it all the time. Deaths are rising, doubling in many of our counties. We know the cartel and money is coming into West Virginia, which has the highest drug overdose rate in the nation. We need to change that.”
He called on Biden to uphold the rule of law telling him, “you’re abdicating your duty as commander in chief. That needs to come to an end.”
He also said “it’s time to fire” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas because “he’s failed miserably at the highest level of government. He needs to go.”
Other lawmakers from Texas and Arizona have called for Mayorkas to be impeached for what they say is his failure to secure the southern border. Mayorkas disagrees.
Last November, when testifying before a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Mayorkas gave himself an “A” grade “for effort, investment in mission, and support of our workforce.” He also blamed the previous administration’s policies for the ongoing problems at the border.
Even though Mayorkas maintains the border is closed, Customs and Border Protection agents made nearly 2 million enforcement actions involving illegal immigrants last year, and seized a record amount of drugs in Biden’s first year in office, critics point out.
Mayorkas also testified that the administration is “on the right track” to make up for what he’s described were “cruel” policies of the Trump administration.
But Morrisey disagrees after having already sued the Department of Homeland Security for terminating the Remain in Mexico policy, enabling hundreds of thousands of people to enter the country illegally. The policy required certain asylum seekers to return to Mexico while waiting for their case to be heard and ruled on in immigration court.
Morrisey also led a coalition of 16 states calling on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to take action against the governments of China and Mexico for their roles in contributing to the drugs flowing across the southern border.
“Chinese chemical manufacturers are now making and sending the raw ingredients to make fentanyl to Mexican drug cartels, which are in turn making and trafficking fentanyl at an industrial scale,” the AGs wrote. “But in the face of this evolving and significant problem, the federal government has seemed content to stand by.”
Morrisey said, “We need diplomatic pressure on the government of Mexico now. We have to begin putting massive pressure on the drug cartels because they’ve literally taken over parts of the border. You can’t fight back fairly with the side that’s not going to live up to the rules.”
While Blinken has yet to reply, he and Mayorkas have argued the Biden administration’s policies are humane, responsible and part of a multi-pronged approach “to address the challenges of irregular migration throughout North and Central America.”
Since taking office in 2013, Morrisey has prioritized combating the opioid crisis in West Virginia. He’s partnering with U.S. Attorney William J. Ihlenfeld II to prosecute drug trafficking across northern West Virginia.
He also spearheaded a multi-year investigation into the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s “role in allowing excessive over-production of the prescription opioids that fueled” the initial crisis the state experienced. “An excessive supply of opioids enables the diversion of these drugs away from legitimate medical and scientific uses into the hands of abusers,” he argues.
“By law, the DEA is supposed to set aggregate production quotas (APQs) for controlled substances at a level that reflects legitimate medical and scientific needs of the U.S.,” Morrisey said. But his office’s investigation found that from 2010 to 2016, APQs for opioids “almost never decreased.”
To raise awareness about the dangers of opioid use, his office launched a “Kids Kick Opioids” PSA campaign and partnered with multiple state agencies “to tackle opioid use in high school athletics.” His office also partnered with the state’s Board of Pharmacy to create new technology to help prescribers and pharmacists reduce over-prescribing opioids. It also helped develop a “Best Practices Toolkit” for groups involved in the pharmaceutical supply chain to use in an effort to curb the prescription pill epidemic in West Virginia.
In 2020, nearly 1,000 West Virginians were killed by fentanyl, accounting for three out of every four drug deaths in the state. According to a 2021 state Department of Health report, fentanyl deaths nearly doubled from 2019 to 2020 in West Virginia, with nearly 100% of the increase in drug overdose deaths in 2020 being traced to fentanyl.
