The Quote Below—More Misinformation from the Media
American Citizens Are The Real Drug Smugglers
“In addition to violent crime, Republicans have centered the role undocumented immigrants supposedly play in trafficking drugs into the United States. . . .
“Though drug smuggling metrics are harder to measure than violent crime — there’s no dead body to investigate if someone successfully sneaks past border officials with drugs — available data does not support GOP claims.
“Around 90 percent of illicit fentanyl is seized at border crossings by people attempting to enter the country at a legal checkpoint, and nearly all couriers of that fentanyl were legally authorized to cross the border, including more than half who were U.S. citizens, NPR reported, citing U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.
“Our analysis, our intelligence continues to point to most of what’s being smuggled at the ports of entry,” Troy Miller, the senior official performing the duties of commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, told NPR. “I’m not saying that there’s no narcotics being smuggled or hard narcotics being smuggled between the ports of entry, [but through ports of entry,] they’re able to hide the narcotics in legitimate travel. . . .
“ ‘Evidence indicates that illicit fentanyl is primarily brought to the U.S. by American citizens and usually through legal ports of entry,” . . . Christian Penichet-Paul [of the National Immigration Forum] wrote. “The calculation is simple: illicit drug smuggling organizations are likely to prefer U.S. citizens as smugglers because they are less likely to raise alarms . . . when re-entering the U.S. through a legal port. . . .
“And while Republicans insist that so-called ‘gotaways’ who evade Border Patrol while crossing the border illegally could hypothetically constitute more of the nation’s illegal drug supply than we currently expect, there’s reason to be skeptical of that, too.
“After all, “hard drugs at ports of entry are at least 96 percent less likely to be stopped than people crossing illegally between them,” the Cato Institute’s David J. Bier [wrote], citing government data. . . . – The Big Lie about Immigrants You Heard at” the RNC This Week, Matt Shuman, HuffPost, [Link]
Fact Check of Above Quote: The heading of this article claims that “Americans are the real drug smugglers”— but just a couple of paragraphs down it acknowledges that this statement is a bit unreal. It states that “more than half of drug smugglers are U.S. citizens.” Thus we can deduce that less than half—but probably close to half—of the smugglers are foreigners. Therefore, foreign drug smugglers are real enough to be a significant problem at ports of entry.
This article declares that most of the fentanyl coming into the U.S. is through ports of entry, but much evidence suggests otherwise. During the past few years, the flow of this deadly drug into our country has surged, as evidenced by more than a quarter of a million fentanyl-related deaths since 2018. During that some period, seizures of fentanyl at the ports, an indicator of the total flow, have not increased substantially. So where else is the flow of fentanyl coming through in a large enough quantity to sustain the ongoing increase in fentanyl usage? The obvious answer is the border territory between ports of entry. Government statistics, in fact, reveal increased traffic in these zones.
The article maintains that smugglers find the ports easy and convenient to use, but this has become significantly less so since the Biden Administration has redeployed Border Patrol agents away from the border to process the legalized entry of illegal aliens into our country. This redeployment has left large stretches of the border virtually unguarded by the Border Patrol—a situation that foreign drug cartels have not failed to notice. Clearly they are taking advantage of the situation. Our high death toll from fentanyl is testimony to their success.