Rep. Bob Latta was taken aback by a statistic he learned during a recent visit to Texas to learn about the southern border and the Mexican cartels fueling the fentanyl crisis.
The cartels can make a fentanyl-laced pill for about 10 cents and then sell it for around $30 a pop in the U.S.
“They are killing Americans for a dime. And I mean, just to hear that is unbelievable,” Mr. Latta, Ohio Republican, told The Washington Times.
Mr. Latta said Congress needs to get serious about changes on both sides of its southern border if it wants to stem the flow of deadly synthetic opioids that are being mixed with other drugs and killing tens of thousands of Americans per year.
His policy wish list starts with the legislation he is pushing with Rep. Morgan Griffith, Virginia Republican, to permanently place fentanyl-related substances on the Schedule I list of drugs so that a range of deadly synthetic opioids are effectively banned except for research purposes.
It is a key priority for the Biden administration, too, though the issue has been bogged down in a side fight over mandatory-minimum penalties.
The Ohio congressman said he expects his bill to get a markup before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is taking the lead role in probing the fentanyl crisis.
“This is something that has got to get done,” Mr. Latta said. “We gotta get our legislation out of the House, and it’s important for the Senate to act. I’m hopeful and confident because, again, this is something that we need to have out there to be able to save lives.”
Mr. Latta said the Biden administration also needs to restart the construction of border barriers to plug holes in the border that the cartels exploit. And he wants to reverse asylum rules that let people stay in the U.S. while their claims are processed, saying it allows the drug cartels to employ persons traveling north and sends the wrong message to Mexico as President Biden pushes Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to crack down on drug operations.
“We got to do our part to make sure that we’re showing everybody else that we’re going to do something about it.” Mr. Latta said.
The Treasury Department took a step in that direction Wednesday, sanctioning six Mexicans accused of fueling fentanyl “super labs” by diverting chemicals directly into the hands of the powerful Sinaloa cartel.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control said two brothers, Ludim Zamudio Lerma and Luis Alfonso Zamudio Lerma, used their companies to supply precursor chemicals to large-scale laboratories that can produce 10 or more pounds of fentanyl, methamphetamine or another illicit drug in each production cycle.
Roughly 70,000 of the 107,000 overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2021 were tied at least in part to fentanyl.
The rate of overall overdose deaths did start to decrease in 2022, a trend the Biden administration attributes to record drug seizures and moves to expand the number of doctors who can deliver treatment for opioid use disorder.
Yet the death toll is far above what the U.S. saw in the middle part of the last decade, prompting a scramble to rein in fentanyl that members of Congress view as a type of poison instead of another drug.
Mexican cartels are pressing fentanyl into fake pills that appeal to young people looking to experiment with prescription drugs. In some ways, the term “overdose” doesn’t quite cut it anymore.
“It’s an outright murder,” Mr. Latta said.
Mr. Latta was among lawmakers who traveled to McAllen, Texas, last week to get a firsthand look at challenges at the southern border.
The congressman said he was disappointed to hear U.S. Customs and Border Protection continues to struggle with a tactic in which the cartels flood one part of the border so they can smuggle persons or drugs across another section of the border while the agents are tied up.
“They know the cartels have put them all there for one reason — to make sure that they can’t be someplace else.” Mr. Latta said, before suggesting that suspending wall-building hurt efforts.
“When President Biden quit building the barriers-slash-walls, wherever you want to call it, it prevents the Border Patrol from doing their job,” he said.
Democrats on the Energy and Committee panel have countered that most of the fentanyl and other drugs that enter the U.S. come through ports of entry and not random border crossings, so GOP complaints about border crossers are misplaced.
“They don’t come on the backs of unfortunate migrants or people who are seeking asylum who are trying to just make a better life, or actually flee for their lives,” Rep. Tony Cardenas, California Democrat, said at a recent field hearing in Texas.
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told the House lawmakers last week that it “stands to reason” that many drug seizures will occur in a controlled environment like ports of entry and insisted that migrants do carry drug-filled backpacks across the border.
Mr. Latta said he is worried that some border crossers are indebted to the cartels and will abet fentanyl smuggling.
“The cartels aren’t doing this out of the goodness of their heart, letting people go through their groups to get them across the border. You pretty much know that these are people that are probably carrying drugs, or that these people are going to be put into servitude once they’re in the United States,” the congressman said.
Immigration advocates say the focus should be on treatment for addicted persons in the U.S., to reduce demand, rather than on migrants seeking asylum.
Still, the Biden administration signaled late Tuesday it is tightening its migration rules, reverting to a Trump-style policy in which those who cross through other nations to reach the U.S. border would be presumed ineligible for asylum.
Many migrants are eager to be caught by border patrol so they can gain a foothold in the U.S. while awaiting court proceedings that can take years to complete, giving them plenty of time to put down roots and/or disappear into the shadows.
Mr. Latta said he wants to see the U.S. revert to more Trump-era immigration rules because too many people are lured to the U.S. by lax policies.
“To say, ‘Come on north, we’ll figure it out once you get here’ — that’s horrible policy,” he said.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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