Newsflash for the WH on the border & fentanyl

Rapid Response

While all eyes are on today’s elections, the White House just reached “it’s seasonal” levels of stupidity on the border, and it needs to be responded to.

Biden spokesman Andrew Bates is claiming that a dramatic surge of fentanyl smuggling is actually evidence that the Biden administration has “stop[ed] fentanyl trafficking.” Bates even shared an article asking “why do Republicans keep complaining about fentanyl seizures,” arguing the seizures “disprove” concerns about drug trafficking. Ron Klain retweeted the tweet

"The [fentanyl] seizures disprove one of the [GOP's] favorite talking points: If the president had implemented an 'open-border' policy, as the right routinely claims, U.S. Customs and Border Protection wouldn't have stopped these shipments." https://t.co/Dxh8aBv3yD
— Andrew Bates (@AndrewJBates46) November 2, 2021

As anyone who pays even the smallest attention to the border knows, fentanyl seizures are used as a proxy for illicit drug trafficking. In other words, more seizures means more fentanyl is being smuggled across the border into the U.S., not less.

A refresher for this White House:

Dr. Joshua Sharfstein of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: “If they're seizing a lot, it's because a lot is coming in.”
Retired Drug Enforcement Administration official Kyle Williamson, who has more than 30 years of experience on drug smuggling at the border: “It’s the worst it's ever been. There's no good news here. And the amount of methamphetamine and fentanyl coming in right now is unprecedented.”
NBC News' Gabe Gutierrez: “Fentanyl being pushed through the desert around El Paso is up more than 355% compared to last year and 4000% than 2018.”
CBS News’ Janet Shamlian: “Drugs coming across the border here are fueling an unprecedented epidemic across the country, the toll of which can be counted in the skyrocketing number of overdose deaths…as agents say, the cartels use a flood of migrants to move a river of drugs.”
Sheriffs in states like Virginia, Maryland, and Massachusetts are seeing a surge in fentanyl pills linked to border smuggling.

Even Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken conceded less than two weeks ago that “record” drug seizures show that the smuggling problem is now “even larger.”

And the problem is only getting worse. As thousands of illegal immigrants were camped in Del Rio because of Biden’s open borders agenda, up to 224 miles of the border were left unpatrolled. As CBP’s statistics show, this ground to a halt the ability of Border Patrol to stop illegal drugs from entering the country.

So, “why do Republicans keep complaining” about fentanyl? Because Americans are dying. For years, Republicans have tried to stop the cartels by securing the border, and for years, Democrats have stopped them. Biden even paid contractors to not build the border wall, a wall which border officials agree decreases drug smuggling in “every single mile that new wall system gets put in.”

Is it ignorance, callousness, a misguided political calculation, or all three? Next time they want to brag about the surging amount of fentanyl crossing the border, the Biden White House should speak to Border Patrol agents and to the thousands of families impacted by the opioid crisis first.