U.S. officials have seized a lot of drugs being smuggled into the U.S. through ports of entry, including a “record-breaking” seizure of meth and fentanyl earlier this month. That smuggler is now facing federal charges, the Justice Department announced. “U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirmed that both drug seizures would be the largest in each drug category, for both this year and last year, in the entire United States,” a statement said.
The seizures have come to the ire of some. Drug pushers, probably. But very visibly Congressional Republicans, who are apparently super pissed off over the seizure of huge amounts of drugs by the Biden administration. Seriously.
Just this past Monday, House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik tweeted that “800 pounds of fentanyl were seized at our Southern Border in October. This is Biden’s Border Crisis.” It’s unclear if Stefanik believes that the crisis is that the fentanyl didn’t get through, but she’s far from the only Congressional Republican or GOP group to appear to be upset over drug seizures.
”Under Joe Biden, enough fentanyl to kill 238 million Americans was seized at the southern border last month,” Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs tweeted in July. “Where's the outrage in the media?”
“In May, 934 POUNDS of fentanyl was seized at our southern border, this is a 300% INCREASE from May 2020,” tweeted the House Republican caucus itself. “Biden’s border crisis becomes more deadly with each passing day and Vice President Kamala Harris is still MIA.”
“899 lbs of fentanyl and 15,631 lbs of methamphetamine were seized at the southern border in October alone,” tweeted GOP Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel. “That much fentanyl is the equivalent of 204 MILLION lethal doses. We need border security!” But don’t the drug seizures mean … they’re not getting through? Am I missing something here, folks?
“Welcome 2 Pres Biden’s America where 10,000 pounds of fentanyl hv been seized by Customs & Border patrol so far this fiscal yr which is enough to kill over 2 billion ppl or more than 1/4 of the world’s population,” Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley opined this month. Meanwhile, just weeks prior, Grassley hosted a hearing focused on opioids, “which are responsible for a rising number of overdose deaths in Iowa in recent years,” Radio Iowa said.
“For Republicans to criticize the seizures is a little weird,” MSNBC’s Steve Benen wrote earlier this month. “In fact, common sense suggests GOP officials should focus attention elsewhere, since the seizures disprove one of the party's favorite talking points: If the president had implemented an ‘open-border’ policy, as the right routinely claims, U.S. Customs and Border Protection wouldn't have stopped these shipments before they entered the country.”
Republicans’ seemingly pro-drug tweets are very fucking weird, and I think are ultimately part of an effort to stop any progress on immigration relief for undocumented communities (feel free to drop your own thoughts below). “Republicans are intent to block any positive progress on immigration, and through lies and strategic racism and nativism, are attempting to again whip up fears over immigrants and the provisions in BBB, all for ugly political purposes,” America’s Voice noted on Tuesday.