FAIRFAX, Va. — Hoping to hit the ground running, federal officials fanned out across the country to spotlight President Trump’s decision to declare the opioids crisis a public health emergency, vowing to assist veterans, disrupt narcotics shipments and infiltrate the “dark web” marketplace, where anyone with a computer can buy deadly drugs from abroad.
From Kentucky to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, Cabinet officials pledged to put the administration’s full might behind Mr. Trump’s pledge to defeat the crisis, which killed more than 60,000 people last year.
“By directing the declaration of a nationwide public health emergency to address the opioids crisis, the president is mobilizing his entire administration to confront this issue,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Friday its cybercrimes unit in Northern Virginia will serve as “ground zero” for probing internet trade routes and Bitcoin transactions so agents and prosecutors can nab traffickers of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that is driving fatal overdoses among heroin users.
The agency is offering its experts to local and state agencies closest to the epidemic so they can learn how to track drug rings from an obituary in the local newspaper to middlemen dealers and the foreign traffickers who feed them.
“We’re offering this in support of the president’s proclamation yesterday. This is an area where we said, ’You know what, this is what we can do now to respond to this.’ We’re in a good spot to do this, and we want to,” said Derek Benner, acting executive associate director for Homeland Security Investigations at ICE.
Mr. Trump declared a public health emergency on opioids Thursday, capping a lengthy wait after he teased the move in August.
The administration left it to Congress to fund new efforts, though for now, officials say Mr. Trump’s use of the bully pulpit will send a powerful signal to law enforcement and addiction-fighters in the field.
“I think the announcement is powerfully symbolic, and that’s important to the country,” said Richard Baum, acting director of the White House’s drug policy office.
Though lacking new cash, the declaration should unlock some resources for addicts, from expanding the number of treatment beds to augmenting the use of telemedicine to treat rural residents from afar.
Mr. Trump’s Cabinet immediately took the effort on the road. Veterans Affairs Secretary David J. Shulkin held a roundtable on addiction in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, while Acting Health and Human Services Secretary Eric Hargan toured a clinic in hard-hit Kentucky.
In Fairfax, Virginia, Mr. Benner said Mr. Trump’s opioids declaration will dovetail with his previous order to attack international criminal organizations, which placed more agents in the field, from El Salvador to Asia.
“The idea that ICE employs is to push our borders out and to do much work with our international partners to prevent the entry of these dangerous synthetic narcotics,” Mr. Benner said.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions reinforced that message 250 miles north of the Beltway, where he cheered efforts to intercept hard-to-detect packages of synthetic opioids that flow through JFK Airport in New York.
“Law enforcement helps keep illegal drugs out of our country, reduce their availability, drive up their price and reduce their purity. That saves lives,” he said. “That’s why this department has been relentless in going after the criminals who are spreading addiction in America.”
Mr. Sessions touted efforts at U.S. airports and maritime ports like San Diego to seize drug shipments while reasserting plans for a border wall with Mexico to disrupt primary heroin routes.
Members of Congress say federal officials could do more, however. They are proposing measures that require foreign posts to send advanced electronic data for incoming packages — FedEx and UPS already do — so inspectors can target suspicious packages.
In the meantime, Mr. Trump said he will use an upcoming tour of Asia to personally urge Chinese President Xi Jinping to crack down on clandestine labs that produce fentanyl with no oversight.
“They’re not scientists, they’re not pharmacists, there’s no quality control,” Mr. Benner said. “People don’t know anymore what they are ingesting.”
The drugs are so powerful they sometimes kill on contact, with no ingestion required.
Traffickers are agile, too, using a variety of cyberchannels to sell their wares in the corners of the internet.
Mr. Benner said his office is hiring the best and brightest to keep up.
“The people that are working here are our best subject matter experts,” he said. “They see the most updated stuff.”
Those skills were on display in a lab at cybercrimes headquarters, where agents reconstructed hard drives that had been smashed or scratched by “bad guys” who dealt drugs and wanted to cover their tracks. Like surgeons, investigators fuse parts back together or order dummy parts to make the device whole again, though data “platters” that look like a scratched LP — instead of smooth glass — pose an extra challenge in retrieving data.
Spurred by Mr. Trump’s order, ICE said it will “put the beacon out” to local agencies who want to use ICE’s sophisticated labs or learn the tricks of the trade themselves.
“They’re the ones that are going to see the overdose deaths first, right?” Mr. Benner said.
In turn, those local tragedies can be the first step in tracing international drug networks.
“So that’s what we’re offering as a capability,” Mr. Benner said. “To go out and say, ’Here’s how you do it. Here’s the forensics capability, here’s how you exploit the information you have on these systems, and then here’s how you work it backwards through the financial transactions — and through the dark net marketplace — to actually find the sources.’”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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