February 28, 2023 Updated: February 28, 2023
A display of the
fentanyl and methamphetamine that was seized by U.S. Customs and Border
Protection officers at the Nogales Port of Entry in Nogales, Ariz., on Jan. 31,
2019. (Mamta Popat/Arizona Daily Star via AP)
Poignant testimony
delivered during a Feb. 28 Congressional hearing on
the U.S. border crisis brought legislators to a firm conclusion: failed or
ineffective immigration policies are directly fueling America’s drug crisis.
“Our country faces record
fatalities from drug overdoses, eclipsing 100,000 deaths, 71,000 from synthetic
opioids alone,” Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) said during the hearing.
At the forefront of this
crisis is fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 100 times more potent than
morphine. Most of the substance is making its way into the United States from
Mexico, much of which is smuggled in by drug
cartels.
Though fentanyl seizures
at official ports of entry on the U.S. border are on the rise, Sheriff Mark
Lamb of Pinal County, Arizona, told the committee that border apprehensions of
fentanyl account for only half of what makes it into the United States.
LA County Sheriff’s detectives and Drug
Enforcement Agency agents at the Los Angeles International Airport seized
approximately 12,000 suspected fentanyl pills on Oct. 19, 2022. (Courtesy of
the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department).
“I hear that 90 percent
comes through the ports. Those numbers are not what we’re seeing. It’s 50-50,”
Lamb said.
He noted that, despite
Pinal not being a border county, the amount of fentanyl his officers have
seized has skyrocketed since 2019. Part of that is due to the proximity to
Interstate 10, a main artery for drug and human trafficking heading north from
Mexico.
Lamb said his
jurisdiction had seen a “600 percent increase” in fentanyl pass through his
county over the past four years. In 2019, Lamb’s officers seized around 700
pills. That number spiked to more than 200,000 in 2020.
In 2021, Lamb’s task
force intercepted more than 1.2 million pills. That number surged yet again in
2022, totaling more than 1.4 million fentanyl pill apprehensions.
He further noted that
finding abandoned camouflage gear, backpacks, and “carpet shoes” littering the
desert in his county is an everyday occurrence. It suggests a significant
number of drug traffickers are making it past border security undetected.
“This is what we deal
with on a daily basis,” Lamb said.
Green said the Mexican
cartels are calculated in their approach to getting drugs like fentanyl into
the United States. He said the traffickers also force illegal immigrants who
owe the cartels money for transport into indentured servitude as drug runners.
Green added that despite
the increase of fentanyl seized at official ports of entry, the drug is still
pouring into the United States. The legislator held up a photo showing 232
pounds of fentanyl seized inland, which bypassed security at the ports of
entry.
In an emotional
testimony, Michigan resident Rebecca Kiessling shared the story of how Mexican
fentanyl killed her two sons in July 2020.
Before the horrific
incident, she said, “I didn’t know what fentanyl was … I didn’t know that my
boys were taking anything that could kill them. They didn’t think they were
either.”
Kiessling said that her
two sons, ages 20 and 18, were with a 17-year-old girl and a drug dealer that
supplied the trio with fentanyl on July 29. All three youths died shortly after
taking the drug.
“Law enforcement made it
clear to me that this fentanyl came from Mexico. It came from our southern
border,” she said.
Kiessling went on to
describe what her former law partner’s husband, a local sheriff, told her. “He
has a stack, every day, there’s a stack of dead people [from drug overdoses],
and there are no leads.”
However, Kiessling’s case
was unique. The dealer who gave her sons the lethal dose of fentanyl was
apprehended. Yet he only received a maximum sentence of 15 years for his
involvement in the deaths of three youths.
“I found out from the
funeral home that they have tons of these cases regularly,” she said, then
added for perspective, “I’m from Rochester Hills, Michigan. We were ranked in
Money magazine in the top 10 cities to live in America a few years ago.”
The year Kiessling’s son
Caleb—one of the overdose victims—was born, in 2000, the number of U.S. drug
overdose deaths was roughly 20,000. But the year the young man died, in 2020,
that number soared to more than 100,000.
“You talk about children
being taken away from their parents. My children were taken away from me … this
is a war. Act like it. Do something,” she said.
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