DeSantis wants lethal force at the border to stop fentanyl traffickers. Most are Americans

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is doubling down on his promise to use lethal force against fentanyl traffickers attempting to cross the U.S. southern border if elected president, telling voters at the first GOP presidential debate last week that he would “use all available powers as commander-in-chief” to suppress the epidemic.

But homeland security officials tell McClatchy that an overwhelming majority of fentanyl is being smuggled through the border at legal ports of entry — and not by foreign nationals, but by U.S. citizens.

Data collected by U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows that over 96% of seizures this year have been at legal entry points, a number consistent with prior years. Moreover, 89% of individuals convicted of trafficking fentanyl last year were Americans.

And very few people encountered by U.S. Border Patrol while entering the country illegally are found to be carrying illegal drugs. In 2022, less than 0.02% of people stopped while crossing the border between ports of entry — 279 individuals out of over 1.8 million asylum seekers — were found by law enforcement to be carrying fentanyl, according to Border Patrol data.

The vast majority of fentanyl caught at legal border crossings are found in tractor trailers and passenger vehicles driven by U.S. citizens, who are far less likely to face scrutiny attempting to reenter the country, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters at a roundtable discussion earlier this year.

“U.S. Customs and Border Protection data evidences that more than 90% of the fentanyl that is brought into this country is trafficked through the ports of entry, which is why we have surged operations to those ports of entry to increase the interdiction of fentanyl that is causing so much death and destruction in our country,” Mayorkas told the House Judiciary Committee last month in an open hearing.

A study analyzing government data and published last week by the CATO Institute, a conservative think tank, found that “hard drugs at ports of entry are about 97% less likely to be stopped than are people crossing illegally between them.”

“U.S. citizens are overwhelmingly responsible for fentanyl trafficking into and through the United States,” David Bier, the author of the study and associate director of immigration studies at CATO, told McClatchy, “so restricting immigration will have almost no effect on the supply of fentanyl.”

The data has driven the Biden administration’s strategy to increase resources at ports of entry that can be used to detect fentanyl, U.S. officials said, including the installation of new “multi-energy portal” systems that can scan trucks and pedestrian cars entering the country without holding up traffic.

“What [the data] indicates is that smugglers prefer to use points of entry, because it’s higher risk to move between them,” one homeland security official told McClatchy. “They’re counting on getting a higher volume through at ports where the amount of regular traffic is so high.”

DeSantis’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment Monday on whether DeSantis was aware that the vast majority of fentanyl is seized at legal ports of entry.

But DeSantis’ promise to use lethal force at the border has become a pillar of his immigration platform, which also includes the idea that state and local law enforcement officers should be given the authority to arrest and deport migrants to assist the federal government secure the border.

As governor, DeSantis has repeatedly tested the state’s powers in enforcing federal immigration laws, such as sending migrants from Texas to cities Democratic strongholds without notice. At the GOP debate on Wednesday, he laid out a vision that would allow like-minded state and local leaders to continue to do the same.

“The cartels are killing tens of thousands of our fellow citizens,” DeSantis said. “We have to reestablish the rule of law and we have to defend our people. The president of the United States has got to use all available powers as commander in chief to protect our country.”

DeSantis told the story of a woman who lost her son to fentanyl after taking a Percocet laced with the drug. DeSantis suggested that cartels are smuggling the “poison” through an open southern border, where U.S. Special Forces could be deployed to shoot them down.

“When they’re coming across, yes, we’re going to use lethal force,” he continued. “Yes, we reserve the right to operate. How many more tens of thousands are we going to let die?”

Since 2018, fentanyl has driven a record surge in drug overdose deaths across the country. Over 70,000 Americans died from synthetic opioids – primarily fentanyl – in 2021, the last year with verified data from the National Institutes of Health, accounting for 66% of all overdose deaths that year. Provisional data from the National Center for Health Statistics suggests that overdose deaths plateaued in 2022.

The Mexican government has been a cooperative partner, Biden administration officials said. But Republican critics of the president’s response to the crisis say that lethal force is necessary at the border despite the adverse reaction that might follow from Mexico City.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been a critic of DeSantis for some time now, and has even urged Americans to not vote for him because of his immigration policies, which he has categorized as a persecution of migrants for political gain.

In an interview with NBC News, DeSantis was asked how he would “tell good guys from bad guys, especially when folks are crossing the border under cover of night.”

“Same way a police officer would know,” DeSantis responded. “Same way somebody operating in Iraq would know. You know, these people in Iraq at the time, they all looked the same. You didn’t know who had a bomb strapped to them.”

“So those guys have to make judgments,” he said.