Scathing testimony before Congress on February 28 hearing Legislators have reached firm conclusions about the US border crisis. Failed or ineffective immigration policies are directly fueling America’s drug crisis.
“Our nation is facing record drug overdose deaths, surpassing 100,000 deaths and 71,000 deaths from synthetic opioids alone,” said Congressman Mark Green ( Republican Party of Tennessee) said at the hearing.
At the forefront of this crisis is fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 100 times more potent than morphine.Most of the material flows into the United States from Mexico, much of it smuggled Infiltration by drug cartels.
Fentanyl seizures at official ports of entry at the U.S. border are on the rise, but Pinal County, Arizona Sheriff Mark Lamb told the commission that fentanyl border arrests account for only half of what is brought into the U.S. He said he didn’t.
“We hear 90% comes from the port. Those numbers aren’t what we’re seeing. It’s 50-50,” Lam said.
He said the amount of fentanyl his officers have seized has surged since 2019, even though Pinal is not a border county.
Lam said his jurisdiction has seen a “600% increase” in fentanyl passing through his county over the past four years. In 2019, Lam police seized around 700 tablets. That number he surpassed 200,000 in 2020.
In 2021, Lam’s Task Force intercepted over 1.2 million locks. That number will skyrocket again in 2022, bringing him more than 1.4 million fentanyl pill anxiety in total.
He further said that finding abandoned camouflage gear, backpacks, and “carpet shoes” littering his county’s desert is a common occurrence. This suggests that a significant number of drug traffickers pass through border patrol and go unnoticed.
“This is something we deal with on a daily basis,” Lam said.
Mr. Green said Mexican cartels were calculated in their approach to bringing drugs like fentanyl into the United States. He said that as a person he was driven into indentured servants.
Green added that despite the rise in fentanyl seized at official ports of entry, the drug is still flowing into the United States. rice field. This bypassed customs port security.
Michigan resident Rebecca Kiesling shared a moving testimony of how Mexican fentanyl killed her two sons in July 2020.
She said before the horrific incident. They didn’t think they were either. “
Kiesling said his two sons, ages 20 and 18, were with a 17-year-old girl and a drug dealer who supplied them with fentanyl on July 29.
“Law enforcement has revealed that this fentanyl came from Mexico. It came from our southern border,” she said.
Kiesling went on to explain what her former legal partner’s husband, the local sheriff, told her: “He has mountains, and every day there are mountains of dead people. [from drug overdoses], and there is no lead. “
But the Keysling case was unique. A dealer who gave her sons a lethal dose of fentanyl has been arrested. However, at most he received only 15 years’ sentence for his involvement in the deaths of his three youths.
“I learned from funeral homes that there are a lot of these cases on a regular basis,” she said, adding for perspective: A few years ago, it was named one of Money magazine’s top 10 cities to live in America. “
In 2000, the year Kiesling’s son Caleb (one of his overdose victims) was born, there were about 20,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States. But in 2020, the year the young man passed away, that number surged to over 100,000.
“You talk about children being taken away from their parents. My children were taken away from me…This is war. Behave like that. Somehow,” she said.
