DEA makes $2.7 billion ask of Congress as fentanyl crisis takes priority
Anna Giaritelli
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The Drug Enforcement Administration pushed House appropriators to increase its budget in the coming year as the federal agency battles fentanyl, now the “greatest criminal drug threat” the United States has ever faced, according to its leader.
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram advocated the White House’s proposed 3.8% increase in the agency’s fiscal 2023 funding to a $2.7 billion budget for 2024, which will begin in October.
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“Just 2 milligrams, the equivalent of a few grains of salt, can kill a person,” Milgram said during a hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies. “It is now the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages 18 and 45 — more than COVID, more than terrorism, more than heart disease.”
Milgram identified the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels in Mexico as the primary criminal organizations that are making and distributing fentanyl across the U.S. and abroad. The cartels have members in more than 40 countries, and fentanyl produced in their labs has been confiscated by the DEA across all 50 states.
In the past, the DEA had focused its efforts on combating global drug networks by taking down one or several people at the top of the organization, only to have new organizations or new leadership pop up not long after.
The DEA is no longer solely focused on taking out the top members of those networks but rather on going after all points in the drug supply chain and all members.
Data scientists and geospatial experts at the DEA are mapping out violent crime in cities nationwide and using that information to determine where fentanyl is seeping into communities.
“The significant spike we saw in 2020 of violent crime across the United States — and as all of us, particularly all of us former prosecutors and judges know — drugs and violence are linked together. You cannot separate them,” Milgram said. “So we’re also looking at drug poisonings … in our local community and bring all of them back to the people responsible in Mexico, the two cartels, whenever we can.”
In one recent large-scale bust, the DEA arrested 50 people in Columbus, Ohio, this week who were tied to a string of violent crime and fentanyl distribution.
“We’re taking the time to step back and map out all of this globally for the first time, and we’ve identified thousands of members of those cartels across the world, hundreds of members of these two cartels across the United States,” Milgram said.
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The next step for the DEA is looking at events, such as murders and fentanyl-caused deaths, on a community level based on where those cartel members are located, then going after their local networks.
Milgram faced tough questioning surrounding an Associated Press investigation that found $4.7 million in DEA funding was spent on no-bid contracts that financially benefited her former colleagues and friends.