Fentanyl is a dangerous narcotic that kills more than 100,000 Americans each year. Donald Trump and many other politicians say this deadly drug is regularly smuggled into the U.S. by undocumented immigrants. But experts tell KPBS border reporter Gustavo Solis that those claims are largely false.
This is the second story in an ongoing series regarding misconceptions relating to border security. Read the first story here.
At a recent campaign stop in the swing state of Pennsylvania, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance talked about the efficacy of border walls.
“Look, no one has ever said a wall keeps out 100% of illegal aliens,” Vance told a cheering crowd. “But if it keeps out 98%, I’d say we’re doing pretty good. And that means less fentanyl, less drugs, and less crime coming into our communities.”
The idea that more border walls and tougher enforcement on illegal immigration will stop illegal drugs from flowing into the United States has long been a political talking point. But it’s become a dominant election-year theme since Donald Trump’s ascendance nearly a decade ago.
And not just at the national level. In February, Republican San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond posted a video on social media saying that one of the things that concerns him about, “how people are just able to walk across the border and get here,” is fentanyl. The implication is that migrants crossing in remote parts of the border are bringing drugs with them.
But data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other federal agencies show the vast majority of fentanyl comes through legal ports of entry. And the people bringing it into the country are native born Americans.
Approximately 80% of people prosecuted and convicted of federal drug trafficking offenses were U.S. citizens, according to Tera McGrath, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California.
“They are people who have the ability to cross but also are going to be able to slip under the radar,” McGrath said.
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McGrath dismissed the idea that migrants and asylum seekers fleeing violence are the ones primarily bringing fentanyl into the country.
“That narrative is a dangerous misconception because that is not who we are seeing,” she said.
Federal records show more than 90% of all fentanyl, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine is seized at legal border crossings or border checkpoints on major roads along the border.
Bad for business
Experts who study transnational crime also dismissed the popular narrative linking migrants to drug smuggling.
Mexican drug cartels control virtually all drug smuggling along the border. Putting their product in the hands of desperate migrants risking life and limb to cross illegally is bad for business, said Cecilia Farfan Mendez, an expert on drug policy and organized crime at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.
“It would not make sense to put your merchandise in such a risky situation,” Farfan Mendez said. “Is this migrant going to cross, is he not going to cross, is he going to get stopped, what is going to happen?”
Using legal border crossings is much less risky - particularly in San Diego, she said.
Overwhelmed at ports of entry
The San Ysidro Port of Entry is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It has 24 vehicle lanes that are often backed up for hours. More than 100,000 people cross each day.
CBP uses a combination of agents, drug-sniffing dogs and sophisticated surveillance technology to identify drug smugglers at the major border crossing, said Sydney Aki, the CBP’s director of field operations. Agents are trained to identify small details in vehicles that could be signs of hidden compartments, he added.
But even with such training and resources, they are fighting a losing battle. Drugs, “could be anywhere,” Aki said. “In their spare tires, the roofs, floorboards, the dashboards, engine compartment, a whole host of different areas.”
These realities make linking migrants to drug smuggling unproductive and even dangerous, experts say.
“If you hear a politician say that fentanyl is being brought by migrants, all these people coming across the border seeking asylum, that is the mark of somebody who is actually not interested in solving the problem,” said Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight for the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).
“That is the mark of somebody who’s trying to get as much political advantage out of it even though 100,000 Americans a year are dying.”
Isacson said that false narrative distracts policymakers from seeking solutions - like installing non-invasive scanners at legal border crossings to detect drugs hidden in vehicles or investing in drug abuse treatment programs to reduce American demand for fentanyl.
But complex policy analysis is not as sexy as catchy slogans you can put on bumper stickers, he said.
“It is so hard to get the conversation to focus on the 48 land border ports of entry,” Isacson said. “That’s so much more boring than Border Patrol agents on horseback or on their ATVs riding through the desert looking for the bad guys.”
