Fentanyl Border Crisis Spills into Wisconsin’s Backyard
The crisis President Biden has created on our southern border is not only jeopardizing America’s national security, it is poisoning Wisconsinites.
In Fiscal Year 2021, enough fentanyl to kill every American nearly seven times over was seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on the U.S.-Mexico border – a staggering statistic, and one that does not include the many shipments that made it past border officials and into communities, like ours.
Drug cartels and other transnational criminal organizations shipping their deadly cargo into the United States is nothing new, but this phenomenon has reached epidemic levels under the Biden administration, which is intentionally erasing our southern border and laying out the welcome mat for drug runners and human traffickers.
In short, the President’s open-borders policies have turned every state into a border state.
According to the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking, Mexico is now the dominant source of fentanyl. Instead of Chinese manufacturers relying on the internet to peddle their wares in American communities, the lion’s share of fentanyl is now manufactured in China, shipped to Mexico, and then brought into the United States by Mexican cartels.
Last month, I traveled to Arizona to see the chaotic lawlessness on our border firsthand. The images from that visit will forever be deeply ingrained in my memory.
From little girl’s shoes lying in the desert to the litter of camouflage backpacks strewn across Pinal County that drug smugglers use to slip past the undermanned Border Patrol, there is no sugar-coating the crisis that is spilling into our country.
After hearing from Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb and officials from CBP’s Yuma Sector, it is safe to say that while the front line of this self-induced crisis may be occurring over a thousand miles away, its casualties are on full display in states, like ours, measured in the growing number of tragic, drug-related deaths.
The captain of the investigations division at the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office, Teri Hook, recently noted that she saw, “More people die last year from overdoses on fentanyl then we did from any deaths even from car accidents.” Moreover, in Milwaukee County, 80 percent of overdose deaths in 2021 contained fentanyl, and just two weeks ago, La Crosse Police seized nearly 3 pounds of fentanyl in a drug bust, enough to kill over 600,000 Americans. And these local instances are hardly outliers.
For the first time in our nation’s history, America witnessed a record number of drug overdoses, 100,000, a number that has doubled in 30 states between 2019 and 2021. A grim milestone, to be sure.
Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans from age 18 to 45. More than automobile crashes. More than suicide. More than heart disease.
And the situation is getting worse.
Thanks to the tidal wave of migrants President Biden’s open invitation has triggered through a return to the failed “catch-and-release” policy, Border Patrol agents have been stripped of their authority to protect the southern border and now serve as a little more than greeting service for illegal immigrants. The sheer volume of migrants flowing across the border, coupled with White House directives to ignore our immigration law, have left CBP personnel spending much of their time providing formula milk, diapers, and other services to illegal aliens.
The solution to this crisis is simple: First, enforce the law. That means completing the southern border fence, ending “catch and release,” utilizing expedited removal for migrants apprehended at the border, and restoring the highly successful “Remain in Mexico” policy, which requires those seeking asylum to wait outside the United States while their applications are considered. Second, it means ending incentives that encourage migrants to make the trip. That means ending promises of amnesty, cutting off publicly funded benefits for illegal aliens, cracking down on states and cities that have enacted illegal “sanctuary” policies, and holding unscrupulous employers who hire illegal aliens accountable. It also means standing up to China.
President Biden and the Democrat-controlled Congress have already shattered the peace and quiet of too many American neighborhoods, leaving countless families who have lost a son or a daughter as collateral damage.
It doesn’t have to be this way, and it shouldn’t be a political issue. This is an American issue, and it’s long past time to change course.