On 28 Feb 2023 the House Committee on Homeland Security held a hearing, “Every State is a Border State: Examining Secretary Mayorkas’ Border Crisis” chaired by Hon. Mark E. Green (R-TN) 🧵 @RepMarkGreen #BidenBorderCrisis #ArtIVSec4 #fentanyl youtube.com/live/HCcAxj-r7…
Green: “Our homeland faces an unprecedented crisis along our Southwest border. This crisis threatens the safety of all American families, no matter where they live in the U.S. Criminals, weapons, trafficked persons, and illicit narcotics are pouring across our borders.” 
Green: “Make no mistake, this crisis is a direct result of Secretary Mayorkas’ Open Borders policies that they began implementing on DAY ONE. In 2021 alone, the Administration eliminated or began to shut down 89 successful border security policies, leading to the current chaos.”
Green (06:22): “The Mayorkas border crisis is enriching cartels and human traffickers. Violent cartel and gang activity is significantly increasing throughout the United States, and illegal drugs continue to pour over the border in massive quantities.”
Green: “The picture … of a woman raped and scalped by the drug cartel. Her body was dropped at an elementary school in Texas to make a point. Cartels move people into our country for a price. In many cases, that price is paid with forced criminal activity operating inside U.S.”
“Further, the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18-45 years old is now fentanyl. Our country now faces record fatalities from drug overdoses eclipsing 100,000 deaths, 71,000 from synthetic opioids alone. As a result, families and communities have been utterly devastated.”
(8:55) “Secretary Mayorkas asserts under oath he has maintained operational control of the border. He [claims] that the fentanyl seizures are up, which they are, and that fentanyl is thus not getting into the country. The implication is that it all comes through ports of entry.”
Green (9:50): “Here is a video from a rancher on the border. Waves of cartel drug runners wear camoflage and carpet shoes and carry backpacks of fentanyl and other drugs. They walk into the country, go to drop sites, load into vehicles and the drugs are shipped all over the U.S.”
Green (10:25): “The cartels are very strategic. They neutralize CBP by having mass waves of coyote-paid people overwhelm the crossing sites, causing CBP to thin [coverage in] other areas to process the mass waves of people at the crossing sites. Then they pour across the border.”
“If fentanyl is being stopped at the crossing sites, why has the street price gone from $95 In Jan ‘21, to $28? Supply and demand. This data comes from TN sheriffs. Mayorkas was lying about having operational control of the border. Fentanyl is killing Americans. Mayorkas lied.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson (15:07): “These challenges go back decades and will never be addressed without fixing our broken system. The majority have offered no solution. Republicans’ bill would have effectively ended asylum in this country and was so extreme it didn’t have the votes.”
Thompson (16:17): “Turning our backs on asylees would be turning our backs on who we are as a country. It would be bad for border security since having a system for people to apply for asylum helps border management and allows law enforcement to focus on real border threats.”
”After failing to deliver a meaningful border bill and still no plan, several committees called hearings. I’m concerned that this hearing won’t help us move toward a solution but rather may be used by some as a platform for divisive rhetoric and anti-immigrant fear mongering.”
Thompson: “Democrats are focused on investing in border staffing, infrastructure and technology, especially at ports of entry where the vast majority of fentanyl is trafficked. Those responsible are overwhelmingly American citizens, not immigrants.”
Thompson (18:28): “Certain members on the other side of the aisle have even suggested defunding DHS, the very department that works to secure our borders. That kind of talk may score political points in certain circles but it flies in the face of good old fashioned common sense.”
Thompson (18:47): “The fact is the Biden admin is working to deal with the fallout of the prior administration’s failed policies by treating people humanely and with dignity. Admin is implementing a 6-pillar plan for immigration and border security.”
Rebecca Kiessling lost two sons, Caleb, 20, and Kyler, 18, to fentanyl poisoning in 2020. “The year they died there were over 100,000 fentanyl deaths. You would think one kid’s death would be enough to raise the alarm. The funeral home told us they see tons of these deaths.”
Mom rips “despicable” Biden for laughing at blame claim for sons’ deaths from fentanyl poisoning @nypost nypost.com/2023/03/02/mom… (“You mock the loss of my sons?” Kiessling said in a scathing video posted on Facebook.)
Mark Lamb (33:40) Sheriff of Pinal County, AZ, 50 miles from the Mexico border and 70 miles from Interstate 10. “We have had a 377% in human trafficking incidents. Vehicle pursuits related to human smuggling up 461%. Drivers are US teens recruited via social media by cartels.”
Lamb: What I deal with are the gotaways. Drugs entering your states come through my county. Camoflage, carpet shoes and backpacks are littered throughout my desert. They come in undetected and illegally. The lack of fortitude to secure our border creates opportunity for cartels.
Lamb: Gotaways are drug smugglers, adult military-aged men who elude Border Patrol by walking through the desert for days with backpacks. Many work directly for the cartels, have criminal records, have been deported before. Their goal is to enter and bring opioids in illegally.
Lamb: This is an incredibly dangerous journey. My agency’s resources are often used on humanitarian missions to recover the undocumented individuals who become injured along the way and are left behind to die in our summer heat by the cartel coyotes.
Lamb: Many people are being tricked and trapped into the human trafficking business by cartel gangs taking advantage of this administrations inability to take action. Our nation’s weak border security policies are practically hand delivering people into a form of modern slavery.
Lamb: Women are being raped. A woman we rescued had a baggie full of pills. We asked what they were, she said when I came across the border I knew I’d be raped multiple times. They’re morning after pills. Have we lost our moral compass so badly we put politics in front of people?
Lamb: “They’re raping the women and children, using them as pawns, putting them into the sex trade here in America. Slavery is prolific, super prolific now, they extort the men. How many times can they sell you a pill? Once. How many times can they sell you a child? Hundreds.”
Lamb (37:25): In Pinal County in 2018 we had 0 fentanyl pill seizures. In 2019 we had around 700 pills, in 2020 we had over 200,000 pills, in 2021 we had over 1,200,000 pills, and last year we had over 1.4M pills seized. Arizona lost 44 children under 17 in 2021, 7 under 1 year.
Lamb (38:30): I’m hearing 90% comes through the ports, that’s NOT WHAT WE’RE SEEING. It’s 50/50. The fact that they think they can bring it though our entry ports is not something to brag about. That tells me the cartel is so confident, they’ll come right through our front door.
Lamb: I will tell you the lines of communication were severed when this administration took over. WE HAVE ZERO COMMUNICATION WITH THE FEDERAL SIDE, WHICH IS DISAPPOINTING. We have to do better on messaging. Stop saying the border is secure, THE BORDER IS NOT SECURE.
Dr. Robert Trenschel is President and CEO of Yuma Regional Medical Center, the only acute care hospital in the area. The closest hospitals are 180 miles away in Phoenix or San Diego. “Whether your mother or a migrant walks through our doors, they receive the same level of care.”
Trenschel: Migrants often require 3x the human resources to provide a safe discharge. Effort includes assistance locating family, making sure they have a safe place to go, arranging and purchasing durable med equip. We have paid for air transport, hotel rooms, taxis, car seats.
Trenshel (42:34): Our reality is this — we have delivered over $26M in uncompensated care between Dec 2021-Nov 2022. That auditable number comes from unpaid bills directly attributed to the large-scale migrant surge. Not sustainable. We have no reimbursement and no solutions.
David J. Bier, Associate Dir. for Immigration Studies at CATO Inst. (44:50): “A freer, more orderly, more lawful immigration system creates a freer, wealthier and safer country. We see people as the ultimate resource. People, regardless of birthplace, are a benefit to society.”
Bier: U.S. immigration is so narrow and backlogged, most people who want to come to this country have no way to do so. This restrictive system is harming our communities, from the largest cities to the smallest towns. 10 million open jobs costs U.S. in productivity.
Bier: Border policies have failed victims by making drugs more potent and deadly. Congress should focus on helping drug users, not damning immigrants. Closing off legal options to immigrate creates illegal immigration, opening them up reduces it. DHS’s parole program is working.
Green (50:00): In the entire previous admin’s four years, 2.4M encounters. In just two years we have had 4.7M encounters, 1.2M (known) gotaways, 5.9M people, 25 states in the U.S. have populations less than 4.6M. LET THAT NUMBER SINK IN. On day one, exec orders reversed policies.
Green: Biden’s exec orders reversing policies that solved this problem were done away with and a surge of people came to our border, the drug cartels take advantage. In the past 2 years, under Mayorkas, 1,400 migrants have died. Are the carpet shoes in Mr. Bier’s statistics?
Lamb (52:42): No, and I find it comical that a lot of researchers and politicians like to tell us what’s going on at the border, but they don’t come down to the border. We’re telling you the statistics of what we see every day. Here’s the remnants, I’ve got thousands of these.
Bier: [The border crisis] is a consequence of our broken legal immigration system. If people had a legal opportunity, then they do not choose the illegal option. This is the consequence of the decades-long restrictions on legal pathways to come to this country.
Rep. Clay Higgins [R-LA]: Nauseating. I don’t know where they find these people that don’t get it. Disconnected from reality. Just a couple of years ago we had the border under control. Canada? France? Germany? Great Britain? Mexico? All of them have much more restrictive laws.
Higgins: Our borders are wide open and out of control, and Americans are dying because of it. Sec Mayorkas is watching this, with his team of attorneys, good. Over the course of the next year, this committee is going to lay out the case against you. If I could arrest you I would.
Higgins (1:02:00): I’d charge Secretary Mayorkas with thousands of murders. You knowingly and willful lied to this body again and again about our border. Under color of law you deprived Americans of their very life. Including this young lady. Dead from fentanyl on your watch.
Higgins: We could fix our border in one week if we had policy coming out of the White House that allowed you to enforce the law and empower the federal agents that are tasked with securing the sovereignty of our nation against the criminal cartels that control the Mexican side.
Lamb: We’re America. We can fix this when we decide to fix it. We see increased violence, ranchers in fear for their lives. These are military-age men, they avoid detection at all costs, not going down without a fight. They try to run deputies off the road. Zero regard for life.
Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ): My friends on the other side don’t like to hear it, but fentanyl and other hard drugs are smuggled through the ports of entry by U.S. citizens. These drugs are hidden in vehicles, cargo or on a person in the hopes it won’t be detected By CBP.
Bier: If U.S. consumers are willing to pay for illicit narcotics, the black market will supply it. We’ve seen that through the last century of prohibition. During the pandemic, it forced the shift from heroin to fentanyl. I do not believe there is a solution at ports of entry.
Bier: I do not believe cracking down on illegal [smuggling] at the border will solve the problem of fentanyl poisoning. Crackdowns produce higher potency drugs which are more dangerous to users. We need to focus on protecting drug users, not border crackdowns or banning asylum.
Michael Guest (R-MS): We must protect users? Legalize fentanyl test strips? What, in your opinion, is the solution to the drug problem? Is the solution to close the border and stop the drug from ever entering the country, not to make it easier for people to use and consume drugs?
Lamb: You have to curb demand, but this is like mopping up the bathroom floor without turning off the tub water. Fentanyl [seizures] in Arizona are now 16% higher this year over all of last year. Just think what it will become by the end of this year if we don’t cut off supply.
Guest: At the border we hear conditions are the worst they have even been, for human trafficking and drug smuggling. We hear law enforcement say the federal government has abandoned them, has dumped this problem in the laps of local officials. Do you share those opinions?
Lamb: We have no line of communication outside Arizona. The federal gov have turned their back on Border Patrol, sent a clear message to law enforcement they are not interested in solving this, and every effort that Arizona and Texas makes to try and fix this, they try to thwart.
Green: When Title 42 ends in May, DHS internal numbers say they believe as many as 14,000 migrants a day will cross the border and enter the country. That’s 425K/month. Last December, the worst we’ve had, was 250K. What would that do to your community?
Lamb: That will demolish our community, and communities like Yuma. They estimate 50% of all illegal drugs come through Arizona’s border, I would say 90% comes thru Pinal County on its way to Phoenix, then it’s transported to other states. Also humans being trafficked for slavery.
Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA) (1:16:00): We don’t have enough agents, they are forced to do double shifts. They need more drug-sniffing dogs. Scanners. Resources. In San Ysidro 50-70% of drugs are seized at the border. Refugees all over the world. Ukraine. Would more resources help?
Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC): Mr. Bier, congratulations, behold your handiwork. You’ve advocated an open and uncontrolled border. Mayorkas has been willing to flout our laws to achieve the mass immigration you favor. You think it will end poverty. The NY Times reported:
“Migrant children, who have been coming into the United States without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country.” @hannahdreier @nytimes
nytimes.com/2023/02/25/us/…
nytimes.com/2023/02/25/us/…
Bishop: The number of unaccompanied minors climbed to a high of 30,000 last year. HHS is supposed to place them with sponsors and be in touch with them, but after one month the agency could not reach more than 85,000. HHS lost contact with one third of the unaccompanied children.
Bishop: Smuggling migrants at the border is now a $15B business. You say, if they weren’t illegal then the Mexican cartels wouldn’t be able to charge them fees. If the cartels have control of the Mexican side, why couldn’t they charge fees and torture people in the narco state?
Migrant smuggling on the U.S. southern border has evolved over the past 10 years from a scattered network of freelance coyotes into a multibillion-dollar international business controlled by organized crime, including some of Mexico's most violent cartels. bit.ly/3ZNb5XF
Bishop: If [cartels] have pervasive command of the Mexican border that BP says they have, why couldn’t they continue to charge fees that they’re torturing people over, and placing children in indentured servitude? Why couldn’t they continue in the failed narco state of Mexico?
Bier (1:23:30): We have H-2A guest worker programs that allow people to come and they’re not controlled by the cartels. We should expand those programs. Bishop: My question to you, sir, what would prevent cartels from charging legal immigrants if they were coming across en masse?
Bier: We already have experience with this, sir, we have legal immigration, it’s just extremely unusual and constrained. We have no year-round guest worker program. Bishop: I’ve asked the question twice, you don’t want to answer it. In January in Culiacan there was open warfare:
Large parts of northwestern Mexico have descended into chaos after the fiery arrest of the son of notorious drug kingpin El Chapo, Ovidio Guzman, as Mexican authorities confirm Guzman’s extradition to the US has been halted. (Reported 9 Jan 2023) #Culiacan bit.ly/3kW56kw
Bishop: There was warfare between the Mexican military and the Sinaloa Cartel, as the Mexican military sought to arrest Ovidio Guzman. They burned cars. Sinaloa soldiers on narco tanks firing 50 cal. weapons at military aircraft in the air. That’s a cartel you are strengthening.
Bishop (1:24:50): Members of this committee, the minority, who’ve advocated for [open borders] relentlessly, and the president of the United States and Secretary Mayorkas. If you think [narco terrorism] can’t occur in the United States, just keep going.
Bishop (1:25:05): What you think we ought to do is have legalization of fentanyl, sounds like a great plan. I suggest you read San Fran-Sicko by Michael Shellenberger. It is outrageous. As misguided as any policy I have ever seen. In the name of humanity.
https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1497643716328103937?s=20
Bier: I said we should get doctors — Bishop: I don’t want to hear any more economic arguments. I’m concerned about Carolina and those other children distributed across the country in homes that don’t care for them, to work in factories, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be.
Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) (1:27:00): Our immigration system remains extremely restrictive despite the major need for workers among American businesses. Even worse, we often hear rhetoric scapegoating immigrants for crime and taking American jobs … immigrants grow our economy.
Bier: With the Ukrainian crisis we had tens of thousands of Ukrainians coming, we created a parole process so they could fly directly from Europe. That program has been expanded to Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua and Cuba. It’s reducing the number of crossings from those countries.
Homeland Security Secretary Touts New Immigration Parole Policy for Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua and Cuba nbcmiami.com/news/local/hom… (The Biden administration said Jan. 5 that it would admit up to 30,000 people a month from those countries for two years with authorization to work.)
Rep. Gimenez (R-FL) (1:30:30): On Jan 29 I met with Sec. Mayorkas who I had asked a number of simple questions. He was upset that I was amazed he did not have the answers, but he said he had answers right at his fingertips. I sent him a letter. I have yet to receive a response.
Gimenez: I got some answers from a friend in Miami. He sent $20K to bring a migrant from Cuba to Mexico and transport across the border. He was immediately given a cell phone, plane ticket and $1,600/month for 6 months in federal assistance. Multiply 4.7M x $1,600 x 6 it’s $45B.
Gimenez (1:33:36): Fentanyl overdoses have skyrocketed, over 100K Americans per year are dying. Imagine if a foreign adversary came and killed 200 Americans every day and then scurried back, how we would react? It’s happening every single day. The cartels are profiting immensely.
Gimenez: Under Trump the cartels were making $500M/year, now they are making $13B on human trafficking alone. But worse than that they’re killing Americans. When a terrorist organization came over and killed about 3,000 Americans, we travelled 15K miles and waged 15 years of war.
Gimenez (1:34:40): We’re doing absolutely nothing about a terrorist organization that’s killing far more Americans [than Al-Qaeda did on 9/11]. We should be making them pay for what they’re doing to us. People supplying that weapon that’s killing Americans need to pay the price.
Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD): There are things we can do short of military options or trying to prosecute Secretary Mayorkas for negligent homicide. Dems have taken steps to do that. The omnibus bill Republicans voted against. More border agents, surveillance tech at ports of entry.
Rep. M. T. Greene (R-GA) (1:41:10): Since Biden took office there has been a direct impact in the number of deaths from fentanyl. In 2020 there were 4.8K pounds of fentanyl seized by CBP. In 2021 it increased to 11.2K pounds seized, a direct result of Biden’s failed policies.
Greene: Biden is failing this country by not securing our border and stopping fentanyl being brought in illegally. It’s affecting every single state. In Georgia, fentanyl deaths in my district are up 350%. Fentanyl doesn’t discriminate, it kills police officers, first responders.
Greene: (1:43:39): This is unforgivable. The Biden admin have blood on their hands, they refuse to secure our border. Would your sons be alive today if our government would secure our border? Ms. Kiessling: The year Caleb was born, 2000, there were 20K drug-related deaths…
Kiessling: They year they died [2020] it was five times as many. I appreciate you using the term poisoning. It wasn’t an overdose. They had no idea they were doing anything that could kill them. It’s because fentanyl got into the country.
Kiessling: I hear this man from the CATO Institute saying it’s because of demand. What I hear him saying is, they asked for it?! What the hell? Seriously, are you kidding me? We need to protect our children. They didn’t want fentanyl, they thought they were getting Percocet.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA): If you had 20K more BP agents across the southern border, would that make it easier for you to do your job? Lamb: Absolutely, I would love more deputies too. Staffing does matter. Swalwell: More drones, sensors? Lamb: We’d love to have a military drone.
Lamb: I think we’re underestimating the amount of lost tax revenue from all the people who come in illegally. We’re footing the bill for a lot of things. Two years one party had control and could have passed an immigration bill, and didn’t, and now here we are. This is your job.
Swalwell: On the fentanyl crisis, the biggest culprit is China. I don’t think Biden has blood on his hands, China does, because overwhelmingly fentanyl comes across the border, it’s U.S. citizens, and fentanyl as you know, comes from China. We should apply more pressure on China.
Swalwell: Sheriff, you said you are saving the country with the number of people you’ve saved. Where I come from, they make a seizure, get guns and drugs off the streets, we don’t use that to make a political point. We give an attaboy to the officers. I’ll give you an attaboy.
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) (1:51:48): I know what war looks like, smells like, feels like. We are at war with China. China partners with the drug cartels and poisons our children with fentanyl every day. This is intentional. Do you think the cartels are terrorizing migrants?
Lamb: Absolutely. Ask people who have been decapitated, chopped to pieces. Enslaved in the sex trade. The families who have lost loved ones. That strikes terror into a lot of people, that would be the definition of a terrorist organization.
Lamb: Children are being separated by the cartels, not U.S. government. We had 130K unaccompanied minors last year. Many we release back to cartel members because there’s no way of knowing where they came from or find family members. Cartels are taking advantage of our policies.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) (1:57:03): Let me compliment Secretary Mayorkas for being an immigrant, and rising from his meager beginnings and serving us with great passion, assertiveness and firmness about securing the American border. Are migrant mothers bringing over drugs?
Bier: Asylum seekers are not bringing drugs. We need to free up law enforcement resources to interdict people who are coming to do harm. Lee: Do you think this process that Gov. Abbott is doing using $4B and putting National Guard at the border, is enhancing safety in that area?
Bier: What the Texas governor has to deal with is a very difficult situation, but we are seeing a lot of people getting arrested for very minor crimes, being locked up, not getting into the immigration process as they should, and are entitled to under our own laws.
Rep. Nick Lalota (R-NY) (2:03:25): 1.2M gotaways. The federal government has no idea where these people are. More than 100K deaths from fentanyl poisoning, over 250 per day. The equivalent of a commercial air liner crashing every day. What resources do you need? Would walls help?
Lamb: Walls absolutely work. I would love to have a military drone that flies 50-100 miles to monitor our desert areas. In the past year over 40K apprehended have criminal convictions and wanted by law enforcement. Think about the number of people getting by that are criminals.
Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI): The vast majority of migrants who come here seeking entry at the southern border do so because they are fleeing violence and persecution. These are human beings who are running away from something and deserve to be treated with humanity and respect.
Magaziner (2:10:23): Domestic extremism is one of our other most serious threats. Over the past three years 80 Americans have been killed by violence motivated by domestic extremism with white supremacy and anti-government extremism being among the most common motivating factors.
Bier: The heart of the problem is at ports of entry. Cartels themselves are telling us this because they are warring over control of the ports of entry. They would not be fighting a war over the control of a port of entry if it was not the most valuable place for drugs to enter.
Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-OK): Two mg of fentanyl, shown here, against a penny, that’s a lethal dose. We know 13K pounds of fentanyl was seized in 2023, that’s enough to kill 333M Americans nine times over. What percentage of what you’re seeing on the ground is coming from cartels?
Lamb: 100 percent from cartels. It doesn’t take much fentanyl, they’re putting it in cocaine, heroin, marijuana. Xylazine is a non-opiate, so naloxone and Narcan are ineffective to counter it. Phoenix is starting to see it added into fentanyl. It will be impervious to Narcan.
Brecheen (2:17:00): We need to see them as a terrorist organization. Are they not the new form of organized crime in America? We’re hearing of city-wide operational control by the cartels. Why should we not be concerned that that is moving into the U.S.?
Lamb: We should be concerned. That violence will spill over, it has spilled over and will continue to spill over in America. DEA is now saying 75% of the fentanyl doses they are finding are lethal doses. That’s a staggering number and it’s going to affect a lot of American lives.
Rep. Mike Garcia (D-CA): Democrats care about human trafficking. We care about a safe and secure border. We agree we need to take on and prosecute drug cartels, and we deeply care about the fentanyl crisis which we know is happening and damaging communities across the country.
Garcia: We also care about something that many of our Republican colleagues do not, and that’s an orderly and humane immigration system. These broad attacks that we’re hearing today on immigrants I believe is un-American. Immigrants are not all drug dealers as some would suggest.
Garcia: The American people are being misled by members of this committee … demonizing vulnerable immigrants across this country. I hope we can build a just and humane system. I’m hopeful our next meeting we’re not using this committee for political stunts and misinformation.
Rep. Laura Lee (R-FL) (2:23:58): Since Biden took office one single fact has become clearer each day. Border security is national security. This issue is endangering our communities. Our AG announced enough fentanyl was seized in just a few months to kill every single Floridian.
Rep. Lee: Please tell us how this border crisis is diverting resources and deputies away from the other important functions that you are tasked with serving in your community? Sheriff Lamb: Just because they’re American citizens doesn’t mean they’re not correlated with cartels.
Lamb: Cartels [recruit U.S. citizens to smuggle] on purpose so we can sit here and make it an immigration issue when it’s really about human trafficking and drug trafficking into America. As those migrants are being victimized, we end up paying the price on the resource level.
Lamb: We had 10 events yesterday where we worked with Border Patrol. One 911 call, the other 9 were groups trying to come into this country illegally in camouflage. I have 4 canine units dedicated to interdiction of drugs on the way in, money and guns on the way back to Mexico.
Lamb: I have an anti-smuggling unit, helicopter, these should all be dedicated to my community to continue to protect them. However, the fed gov’t is not getting the job done on the border — and this is no knock on our troops, BP and ICE are phenomenal — but we pick up the slack.
Lamb: We see every day, we’ll probably stop 3, 4, 5 vehicles piled with 15-20 people being trafficked and extorted because they couldn’t pay the full amount at the border, or being put into the sex trade. We’re seeing that increase every day, exponentially. It’s not ok to allow.
Kiessling: They put the drugs in vaping. It’s not just nicotine, they put all kinds of things into the vaping, the kids get it at a young age. There weren’t resources at the school. For victims of identity theft, the sheriff has a packet. Nothing on fentanyl, nothing on Narcan.
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL): We’ve heard a lot of name-calling and fear-mongering today. Every time our undocumented community is referred to as illegals and criminals it shows how Republicans choose not to recognize someone’s basic humanity. It’s a choice with real consequences.
Ramirez: As the ONLY member of Congress in a mixed-status family, you are saying that my family, my husband and I, should be broken apart. Today’s hearing is called “Every State is a Border State,” and it’s clear the intention is to [stoke] fear and hate.
Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY): It’s important for success of the Homeland mission that we focus on the challenges of law enforcement. Conflating fentanyl crisis with asylum seeking distracts from the real work of surging resources and personnel required to win against drug cartels.
Clarke (2:51:04): As the daughter of immigrants, I find it extremely distasteful to sit here and look at how we’ve used the plight of our fellow Americans to exploit what is clearly xenophobia. Ms. Kiessling, I am deeply sorry for your loss. But I know with proper resources …
Clarke: … dedicated to drug rehabilitation, education, some of the things you mentioned that you did not have access to in your child’s school, we could save many more lives. And I hope that you’ll become a more vocal advocate for delivering those resources to your community.
Clarke: And Dr. Trenschel, you have a hospital that could do great work in that space, I hope you too will become an advocate for the type of treatment that our nation needs to get past what has been decades-long addition crisis. When we clear the air of the smokescreen …
Clarke: … that has been erected by those who would use our crisis of addition to demonize migrants, who have risked life and limb seeking safety and freedom in one of the greatest nations in the world, that we will get down to the business of a 21st century immigration system.
Rep. Dale Strong (R-AL): Last weekend several of us were able to make a trip to the southern border and witness firsthand this administration’s border crisis. This trip confirmed our southern border is in crisis, it’s hard to imagine anyone could reach a different conclusion.
Strong: This is not a Republican issue or a Democrat issue. It’s an American issue. North, south, east, west, rich, poor, black, white, Latino, Indian, drugs do not discriminate. Fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, human smuggling is rampant, no American is safe.
Strong: You may have seen a report, a province in Canada will decriminalize possession of heroin, morphine, fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA. Do you think this is the right approach? Kiessling: Fentanyl is used for anesthesia in surgeries. You need an anesthesiologist.
Kiessling: Are we going to have a country of anesthesiologists provided for all of them? Drug dealers are trying to kill our children. The reason they’re adding the new sedative the horse tranquilizer [Xylazine] is because they don’t want them to be saved by Narcan. This is war.
Strong: Some have called to defund law enforcement and police. What would that mean for local efforts at the border if law enforcement agencies were to start cutting funding? Lamb: A lot of the stops you’re seeing, the busts are happening on a local level far from the border.
Lamb: [Fentanyl] is getting through the border. Even though [CATO Institute] say 90 percent [of smuggling] is happening at the checkpoints, in Arizona it’s 52 and 48 percent so the majority of ours is, HALF OF IT IS STILL COMING THROUGH BETWEEN the check points.
Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV): I’d like to remind this committee, when this came up for us to consider putting more resources into fighting this drug from across the southern border, all but two Republicans voted against the appropriations bill. That bill had $400M to inspect for drugs.
Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ): In Arizona fentanyl trafficking has taken its toll on our communities. More than 8,600 pounds have been seized along the SW border in the first four months of this fiscal year, enough to kill 1.9M people. Could you speak on the impact this has on victims?
Lamb: Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death not only of adults age 18-45, it’s also the leading cause of death of children. This is preventable. We work tirelessly because the sheriff’s office, we are the de facto mental health providers, we deal with addiction issues.
Ciscomani: I call the I-10 the artery of our state, for commerce, for transportation between two major cities. And trafficking. We’ve seen an increase in high speed chases across counties where lives are being lost of bystanders, innocent drivers, but also those being trafficked.
Lamb: We had a 461% increase in the past two years for high speed pursuits involving human trafficking. A lot of times these are kids driving, they run and they have 10 people in their car, they lose control of the vehicle causing injury and death to themselves and the migrants.
Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY): In 2021 Suffolk County lost 425 residents to overdoses from opioid pain relievers including fentanyl. The New York State Health Commissioner reported three quarters of OD deaths in New York now involve fentanyl.
Green: We have differences of opinion, but I think everyone wants what’s best for our country. We heard a lot today that the crisis is due to a lack of resources. The budget didn’t decrease on Jan. 21. What changed was the removal of significant policies that worked.
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