Most fentanyl is now trafficked across US-Mexico border, not from China
WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group) — As the opioid addiction crisis continues to evolve, federal agencies in charge of tracking the flow of drugs are seeing a shift in how fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid, is entering the United States.
In recent years, China has been accused of fueling the opioid addiction crisis and exploiting the U.S. Postal Service and international express mail carriers to ship fentanyl into the United States. Now officials say those channels appear to be drying up, while shipments through the U.S. southern border are on the rise.
The number of drug seizures involving high-purity fentanyl sent via mail from China "dropped precipitously" this year, according to Thomas Overacker, the executive director of the Office of Field Operations at U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.
Only several pounds of fentanyl have been intercepted this year at U.S. mail facilities and airports, predominantly originating from China. "Most of the illicit fentanyl" entering the country "does so at ports of entry along our southwest border," Overacker told members of a congressional subcommittee Tuesday.
To date, in 2019, Customs and Border Protection has seized more than 2,000 pounds of fentanyl, more than enough to poison the entire U.S. population. Fentanyl or fentanyl-related substances (analogs) can be 50 times more potent than heroin and lethal in a dose as small as a grain of salt.
SUCCESSES THAT CAUSED THE SHIFT FROM CHINA TO MEXICO
The fentanyl that crosses the southwest border is typically less pure than the Chinese fentanyl typically sent through international mail but it is trafficked in volumes that are orders of magnitude larger.
This has revealed new challenges. The Drug Enforcement Administration has noted some success in U.S.-Chinese joint efforts to control fentanyl. "Now, Mexican cartels have an increasingly important role in fentanyl trafficking," said Matthew Donahue the regional director for the DEA's operations in North and Central America.
The shift from China to Mexico is very recent and largely the result of successful drug control strategies implemented in the past two years.
Specifically, officials cited Beijing's decision in May to criminalize all fentanyl-related substances following U.S. pressure. The move led to a decline in the number of Chinese vendors willing to export fentanyl products, according to David Prince with Homeland Security Investigations' transnational organized crime office.
In the United States, the Department of Justice imposed an emergency scheduling of all fentanyl products and analogs in February 2018. That emergency scheduling has had "a significant positive impact" and slowed the distribution of illicit opioids, according to the DEA. The emergency scheduling will expire in February 2020 unless Congress votes to make it permanent.
The U.S. Postal Service has also dramatically stepped up its role in combatting the opioid crisis. In response to the exploitation of the postal service by international fentanyl traffickers, Congress required the agency to get advanced electronic data on 100% of inbound shipments by December 2020 with an urgent emphasis on parcels coming from China.
As a result of requiring data on the sender, recipient and the contents of an international parcel, as well as new technology to scan packages, the postal service saw a 1,000% increase in the number of parcels seized containing synthetic opioids between 2016 and 2018. Domestically, the agency saw the number of opioid parcel seizures increase by 750% in the same timeframe.
In 2019, USPS statistics suggest that international seizures are down and domestic seizures are trending up. "This shift may suggest synthetic opioids are increasingly entering the country through means other than international mail," Chief Postal Inspector Gary Barksdale told lawmakers.
DRUG CONTROL AND THE BORDER CRISIS
The U.S.-Mexico border has long been the world's busiest with more than $1 billion worth of legitimate freight trafficked through southwest entry ports and tens of thousands of passenger vehicles daily.
Currently, Customs and Border Protection scans less than 2% of privately owned vehicles and 16% of all commercial vehicles. Top CBP and Homeland Security officials consistently raise concerns that they simply don't know what is coming through the border, both at ports of entry and in between.
Trump administration officials have regularly cited the drain on CBP and Border Patrol personnel due to the humanitarian crisis at the border. Agents have been redeployed from drug interdiction to process the thousands of migrants arriving at the southwest border daily.
Republican Congressman Greg Walden of Oregon said he was told by CBP officers in Yuma, Arizona that drug interdictions had declined because agents were "overwhelmed" by the migrant crisis.
"There's no question that the current conditions on the southwest border have caused us to have to shift our personnel," Overacker said. But he denied that the border crisis had negatively impacted CBP's mission to detect and stop fentanyl.
With 90% of all fentanyl seizures occurring at legal points of entry, Overacker said the crisis had not changed agents' approach to drug scanning. The strain on personnel has mostly affected vehicle traffic and led officials to close transportation lanes at ports of entry.
"At ports of entry, we've seen things stabilize," Overacker said. "And with the apprehension numbers declining now between the ports of entry, we think the situation is improving."
The agency is on track to interdict more fentanyl than it did in 2018, before the border crisis escalated.
In the future, CBP is counting on a multi-year investment from Congress to improve drug scanning techniques. The agency intends to implement drive-through scanning equipment. The technology would ideally cover all vehicle traffic.
In last year's budget, CBP received $570 million for technology to improve its ability to scan vehicle traffic. CBP was also given funds for additional canine drug detection teams. When asked if the Trump administration's $20 billion border wall was a good use of agency resources, Overacker said that scanning capabilities are the agency's "first priority."
On top of CBP's drug interdictions at the border, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, seized more than 9,900 pounds of opioids in 2018, including 2,737 pounds of fentanyl. The agency is expected to exceed those numbers in 2019.
According to Prince, HSI is also "making inroads" into the use of cryptocurrencies and the Dark Net by fentanyl suppliers. This year, the agency has seized nearly $1.9 million in fentanyl-related digital currency. HSI also has more than 700 open cyber investigation and 200 investigations into the criminal Dark Net, many focused on illicit opioid suppliers.
More than 70,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2017. Fentanyl was involved in more than 28,000 of those deaths. According to recently released provision data from the Centers for Disease Control, the number of overdose deaths is expected to decrease for the first time in nearly three decades. The statistics suggest there were roughly 69,100 overdose deaths in 2018.
