Silver State Times

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) has a history of changing her mind about border security, according to an opinion piece published by Las Vegas Review-Journal.

She is on a growing list of Democrats who are up for re-election in November and spoke out against President Joe Biden's decision to end the Trump-era Title 42 border immigration policy, the opinion piece noted. She refused to join Republicans in calling for a vote to extend Title 42, however.

Cortez Masto in 2020 sponsored legislation to defund border wall construction at the U.S./Mexico border, according to Breitbart. She was one of the leading senators in 2021 who requested amnesty for 11 to 22 million people who entered the U.S. illegally through a budget reconciliation package.

The senator is running against Adam Laxalt (R), former attorney general for Nevada, as she seeks re-election to the U.S. Senate.

Cortez Masto's "claims on Title 42 are nothing but election-year rhetoric; she has no intention of protecting our southern border," Laxalt told Breitbart.

The crisis at the southern border is driven by the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels – two criminal drug networks – according to analysts and as reported by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). A growing opioid crisis is seen as a result of the cartels' influence, as more than 108,000 deaths were recorded in the U.S. last year. The two Mexican cartels are dominating America's illegal fentanyl supply, which is being smuggled across the border every day.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) confirmed that fentanyl available in the U.S. is primarily supplied by the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels. Over 107,600 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, according to the CDC and as noted in the DEA report. Nearly 70% of those deaths were related to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.

Officials in the Biden administration revealed in September that U.S. authorities made more than 2 million arrests regarding immigration along the southern border over the past 11 months, The Washington Post reported. That number exceeded more than 1.7 million arrests recorded last year.

The Biden administration plans to end the Trump-era Title 42 policy, according to UnHerd, a British online magazine. Officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) revealed in August that they plan to end another Trump-era program known as Remain in Mexico. This policy "allowed border agents to turn migrants away and have them wait in Mexico until their removal hearings," Batya Ungar-Sargon said in the UnHerd piece. She claimed that ending this policy will clear the way for potentially tens of thousands of migrants to enter the U.S. without legal permission.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that immigration authorities recorded the highest daily number in U.S. history of migrants entering the United States along the southwest border. Data from DHS showed that Border Patrol agents logged approximately 8,000 migrant encounters per day as of Sept. 15.

Overdose deaths in Nevada rose by more than 20% last year, according to KSNV. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that the state had at least 1,036 overdose deaths between October 2020 and October 2021. Approximately two-thirds of those deaths involved synthetic opioids such as fentanyl; deaths from the synthetic opioid are increasing in southern Nevada.

Silver State Times reached out to Cortez Masto for comment on these issues but did not receive a response.