Grand Canyon Times

U.S. border officials and analysts are saying that the crisis at the southern border of the United States continues to be driven by the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels, fueling an opioid crisis whose death toll is still climbing. 

As competition for market share intensifies, fentanyl has become an increasingly profitable export–both more potent and easier to produce than heroin. Fentanyl has been identified as a leading culprit of opioid overdoses in the United States, and a driver of the opioid epidemic claiming record numbers of lives today.

In a Texas Tribune report announcing legislation for harsher penalties for fentanyl traffickers, Sen. Marco Rubio said, “According to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), cartels increasingly target children and young people. The most obvious instance of this trend is the pills of ‘rainbow fentanyl’ that the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels are smuggling across the border, which law officers have seized in 18 states this month.” 

According to Texas Tribune, earlier this summer, the Department of Homeland Security ended the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols, a program that required immigrants to remain in Mexico while their claims were being adjudicated in the United States. Critics of the policy rollback, such as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, say Biden's ruling "makes the border crisis worse.”

Preliminary data released by the Centers for Disease Control indicates that deaths from fentanyl overdoses reached an all-time high in 2021 – just over 80,000. The overdose counter is decelerating but still climbing.

Heroin is roughly 30 times more expensive to produce than fentanyl, The Wall Street Journal reported. Bryce Pardo, the associate director of the Rand Corporation’s Drug Policy Research Center, said that heroin usually costs around $6,000 per kilogram to produce, while fentanyl can be as cheap as $200 per kilogram.

According to declassified DEA intelligence reports, the New Generation Jalisco and the Sinaloa cartels are the primary traffickers of fentanyl into the United States. These cartels dominate trafficking corridors at the southern border leading into Arizona and California.

A recent press release from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) said that nearly 4.9 million people have illegally crossed the border into America in the 18 months since President Joe Biden took office. 

“The endless flow of illegal aliens and the incursion of lethal narcotics pouring across our border will not end until this administration demonstrates a willingness to enforce our laws,” President of FAIR Dan Stein said. The FAIR statement goes on to point out that the drugs seized at the border represent only a fraction of what is actually trafficked into the U.S. – and in July alone, 469 million lethal doses of fentanyl were seized at the border.

The DEA reports that fentanyl is frequently and intentionally mixed in with other drugs like heroin or cocaine to increase its potency. Of course, blending these drugs together results in a much higher likelihood of an overdose – and without laboratory testing, it’s impossible to know how much of each drug is present.