The Southwest Border Patrol has reported that a record 1.8 million apprehensions have already been reported for 2022.
“In total, there were 227,547 encounters along the southwest land border in September, a 12 percent increase compared to August. Of those, 19 percent involved individuals who had at least one prior encounter in the previous 12 months,” a Customs Border Patrol operational report reads.
The number is significant because it could weigh heavy on the minds of voters ahead of next week’s midterm election as border security and stopping fentanyl from crossing the southern border have been a topic of debate for much of the year.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) voted against increased funding for the now-defunct Migrant Protection Protocols, a Trump-era policy designed to slow the flow of migrants into the U.S. and supervise them more carefully. President Biden ended this program on his first day in office.
Fox News reports that 12,000 rainbow fentanyl pills were confiscated at the Los Angeles International Airport last week. Officials are warning that similar pills could end up in recent Halloween bags due to their candy-like appearance.
According to data released by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), in Nevada alone, over 1,000 overdose deaths were reported from March 2021 to March 2022.
According to declassified DEA intelligence reports, the New Generation Jalisco and the Sinaloa cartels are the primary traffickers of fentanyl into the United States. These cartels dominate trafficking corridors at the southern border leading into Arizona and California.
Marc Theissen, a columnist for the Washington Post, argues that the border crisis is caused by President Biden’s law policies. “As the migrant crisis has grown over the past year, fentanyl seizures rose 56 percent in March 2022 compared with March 2021. And this surge in illegal drugs has contributed to the crime surge in U.S. cities,” he writes.
