Mayorkas: ‘China bears responsibility’ for US fentanyl epidemic
Anna Giaritelli
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The Biden administration’s top homeland security official laid the blame for the nation’s fentanyl epidemic at China’s doorstep and called for its government to block the export of precursor ingredients.
“China bears responsibility,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during a discussion at the Aspen Institute’s security summit in Colorado Thursday. “[China] produces chemicals, many of which have legal use, [and] the pill pressers that are used to manufacture fentanyl. It is extremely easy to manufacture. It is extremely quick. It’s easy to conceal.”
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Fentanyl is a man-made opioid drug that is used by hospitals to treat extreme pain, but it has been cloned by illicit drug manufacturers and sold on the street or mixed into other illegal substances.
The drug is so potent that three grains of pure fentanyl can induce a coma. It has become so prevalent in the United States that in 2021, U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 45 years old were more likely to die from fentanyl than they were as the result of a car crash, the coronavirus, a heart attack, suicide, or a terrorist attack.
Overdoses, which are also referred to as poisonings because users may not know the illegal drug that they are ingesting is tainted, were a driving force behind the record-high 100,000 total drug-related deaths in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Without naming names, Mayorkas called out Republican lawmakers who have claimed that the immigration crisis between the ports of entry at the southern border was connected to the influx of fentanyl making its way into the country.
“Some have used the border as a cudgel and conflated migration and the trafficking of fentanyl because 90%, 90% of the fentanyl comes in through ports of entry,” Mayorkas said.
Publicly available government statistics indicate seizures at the border have ballooned from two pounds in 2013 to more than 20,000 pounds since fiscal 2023 began in October 2022.
In fiscal 2022, roughly 90% of the fentanyl that federal law enforcement seized was found on pedestrians and vehicles at the ports of entry. The remaining 10% was seized by Border Patrol agents who operate highway checkpoints within 100 miles north of the border, acting as a second line of defense for smuggling loads that made it through the port or in smaller amounts between the ports.
Mayorkas said synthetic, or man-made, drugs are also caught at mail inspection facilities at major airports nationwide staffed by DHS officers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations.
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“The number of small packages that we interdict with firearms, synthetic drugs — it is stunning,” Mayorkas said, adding that he had recently toured the largest such inspection facility at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.
“We are addressing the supply side from an enforcement perspective. We are harnessing artificial intelligence to enhance our capacity to interdict drugs, to be able to see anomalies in passenger vehicles, commercial trucks,” Mayorkas said. “I will say the creativity of the smugglers is extraordinary and yet our ingenuity and building response protocols is also extraordinary.”