Border patrol agents along the southern border were able to confiscate over 1.6 million doses of fentanyl in pill form along with other lethal drugs hidden inside large metal crates stashed under the floor and inside various trap doors of an 18-wheeler big rig Saturday at the Nogales Port of Entry located in Arizona.
Michael W. Humphries, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Nogales Port Director, stated via social media that a “massive amount of fentanyl pills” and many other narcotics such as heroin and cocaine were discovered and taken before being allowed to cross the U.S.-Mexican border.
The seizure from this past Saturday takes place just a scant few days in the wake of Nogales agents blocking roughly 265,000 rainbow-colored fentanyl pills, which looks like pieces of candy and sidewalk chalk.
This particular synthetic opioid, which is normally utilized to assist people with chronic pain or in the wake of extreme surgeries, has well over 100 times the power of standard morphine, reported officials with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). However, with the total amount of illegally made fentanyl being created in hidden illegal labs, many smugglers along the southern border have caused the crisis to ramp up in what many are calling “an epidemic hidden by the pandemic.”
“There’s no question in my mind that the vast majority of chemicals are coming from China and going into Mexico and being mass produced into fentanyl and methamphetamine and increasingly into the counterfeit pills that we see on our streets,” expressed Anne Milgram, one administrator with the DEA as part of a press conference held last year.
Back in 2021, officials with the DEA managed to bust over 9.5 million illegally made pills, with roughly 40% of those sporting a dose of the drug that would be lethal to humans, as reported by The Epoch times.
As stated by the CDC, these synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, are the main vector of overdose deaths across the United States.
Agents of the border patrol have reported that fentanyl seizures have spiked by over 200% as of last month. U.S. lawmakers are now calling for local, state, and federal officials to speak out about the crisis.
The Epoch Times reached out to Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) in June who claimed that “without abusing law enforcement jurisdictional authority, without abusing sovereignty, [and] without abusing rights,” the country has to step up to work together in order to stop the tide of fentanyl flooding over the border.
“It all has to be done while operating within the parameters of the law and the Constitution,” expressed Higgins. “We have lost operational control of the southern border months ago, and fentanyl is entering the country at unprecedented levels—and there’s no end in sight.”
Higgins, who threw his support behind the legislation that sought to make fentanyl trafficking punishable by life in prison, places the blame for the crisis on extremely weak broader policies where some migrants are “likely plugged into a criminal network,” which allows millions of fentanyl-based counterfeit pills to make their way into “every nook and cranny of the country.”