Forget China or Russia. The biggest national security threat to the United States lies across the southern border.
On August 19, 2022, Anne Milgram, the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said Mexican cartels were killing Americans at “catastrophic and record rates” with hard drugs such as fentanyl. She cited two cartels — the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel— who she believes are responsible for the bulk of fentanyl-related deaths in the US.
“What we see happening at DEA is essentially that there are two cartels in Mexico, the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation cartel, that are killing Americans with fentanyl at catastrophic and record rates like we have never seen before,” Milgram proclaimed. “And those cartels are acting with calculated deliberate treachery to get fentanyl to the United States and to get people to buy it through fake pills, by hiding it in other drugs, any means that they can take in order to drive addiction and to make money.”
Per figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), roughly 108,000 Americans succumbed to drug overdoses in 2021.
CBS co-host Tony Dokoupil called attention to how drug dealing operations had changed in recent years. Previously, dealers “wanted to keep a person addicted, keep them paying money, but not kill them.”
“The whole world of drugs has changed,” Milgram stated. “First of all, the fentanyl that we see is synthetic, it’s manmade. It’s important to know that there’s an unlimited amount that these two cartels can make. All they need are precursor chemicals that they are buying from China, from these Chinese chemical companies, bringing them to Mexico and synthesizing massive quantities. That’s important to understand. The second piece, used to be that drug deals were hand to hand, in back alleys or connected to a specific dealer that would meet someone.”
Milgram highlighted how many drug deals are being carried out on social media apps such as Snapchat. In these cases, drug users would be looking for drugs such as Adderall or Percocet. In addition, she said that the DEA was already looking into ways to combat fentanyl smuggling.
According to Harold Hutchinson of The Daily Caller, “Mexican cartels have also recruited teenagers through gaming, reaching out to them through WhatsApp.”
“Right now, we are actively investigating every single possible lead we can take and we are looking very much at what we can do in this space,” Milgram remarked. “Our top priority is to defeat the two cartels [CJNG and Sinaloa Cartel] because to be really clear there’s an unlimited amount of drugs that they can make. We have to stop it before it comes from China to Mexico to the U.S. The second piece is that, yes, we have to be aggressive on this.”
“I will tell you that the men and women of the DEA are extraordinary,” she commented. “We’re out every single day around the world in countless operations, our agents are in harm’s way. We take loaded guns off the street virtually every single day across America and across the world.”
Indeed, America has a humanitarian disaster at its southern border that’s spilling over into the interior of the country. This is the product of the American ruling class’s negligent border security policies. Instead of focusing on shoring up the country’s border security, many in DC would rather obsess over the conflict in Ukraine. Talk about misplaced priorities.
According to a previous BLP report, Border Patrol has seized over 8,000 pounds of fentanyl thus far in 2022. Unquestionably, the present fentanyl and broader border security crisis, not geopolitical intrigues in Eurasia, are an existential threat to the US.
Will the DC Swamp class ever comprehend this? Doubtful.
That’s why America First must overthrow the present political class in the Beltway and usher in an era of unapologetic nationalism that prioritizes securing our border and not the borders of foreign countries.