U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials last week announced the largest drug bust in their history, seizing 254 pounds of the deadly opioid fentanyl.
They captured the haul, which was hidden in a secret compartment in a Mexican produce truck, heading into the United States at the Nogales border crossing into Arizona.
President Trump took to social media to celebrate the bust and the border agents who took part in preventing the deadly substance from entering the country.
“Our great US Border Patrol Agents made the biggest Fentanyl bust in our Country’s history,” he said. “Thanks, as always, for a job well done!”
Based on statements by Nogales CBP Port Director Michael Humphries, the seizure could have prevented over 460 million drug overdoses.
“It is said that a quarter-milligram, or the size of a few grains of salt, of fentanyl, which is a dangerous opioid, can kill a person very quickly,” he said, adding that the amount of the drug “could have harmed so many families.”
ICYMI: RECORD FENTANYL SEIZURE – #CBP officers in AZ seized 254lbs of fentanyl and 395lbs of meth concealed in a tractor-trailer arriving from Mexico last week. It was the largest fentanyl seizure in CBP history. LEARN MORE: https://t.co/2unUTIKVbh pic.twitter.com/bGUjH6Gr2j
— CBP (@CBP) February 2, 2019
This is the National Emergency
Conservative author Ann Coulter urged President Trump to make a case to the American people that a border wall is the only compassionate solution to the national emergency threatening the nation – a solution that also encompasses stopping the flow of drugs into the country through the southern border.
Coulter explained the threat of the heroin crisis and why opioid addictions and death are “100 percent a problem of not having a wall on the border.”
“70,000 Americans are dying every year,” she explained. “That’s more than died in the entire Vietnam War. That is a national emergency.”
This massive drug bust underscores the fact that it is indeed a national emergency.
Trump Has Focused on the Opioid Crisis
President Trump has long been addressing the opioid crisis, even winning the Republican primary in New Hampshire as a candidate in part because of his willingness to talk about the problem where others would not.
“This crisis of drug use, addiction, and overdose deaths in many years, it’s just been so long in the making,” the President said in October. “Addressing it will require all of our effort and it will require us to confront the crisis in all of its very real complexity.”
He went on to use a key phrase in describing the problem, calling the opioid crisis “a national health emergency, unlike many of us (have) seen in our lifetimes.”
He’s got the basis for an argument that the opioid problem constitutes an emergency. He now has a major drug bust to back up that claim. And he has a resistance party in Congress that won’t allow him to secure the southern border, forcing his hand to circumvent Democrat lawmakers.
In short, he now has everything necessary to make an emergency declaration, secure the funding, and get the wall built.
