Jessica Costescu writes for the Washington Free Beacon about one positive result of the Trump administration’s increased emphasis on border security.
Cartels have severely pumped the brakes on trafficking fentanyl into the United States, and experts say that’s thanks to the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown.
Fentanyl seizures year-over-year at the southern border have been cut roughly in half almost every month since President Donald Trump took office, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data. In June, it was only a 42 percent decrease, but there was a 70 percent drop in May.
According to experts, the plunge isn’t because authorities are catching less fentanyl—it’s because cartels simply aren’t trafficking as much. They said a suite of interconnected Trump policies that enhanced border security and increased targeting of cartels by U.S. and Mexican agencies—under pressure from Trump—have forced the criminal organizations to scale back operations.
“The statistics are a true reflection of the amount of drugs that are coming here,” Center for Immigration Studies resident fellow in law and policy Andrew Arthur told the Washington Free Beacon. “Consequently, the quantity of drugs is dropping because the Trump administration has made it a priority. It has made the Mexican government make it a priority.”
“The cartels are deliberately tapering off on the amount of fentanyl they’re sending to the United States,” he added. “The cartels are scared.”
The findings underscore a stark contrast with how former president Joe Biden handled border issues. The Biden administration’s permissive approach led to a crisis resulting in more than 8 million encounters at the southern border. According to Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, the Biden administration seized enough fentanyl to kill 14 billion people—but that only counts what was caught.
Trump’s pressure on Mexico to clamp down on cartels is at the heart of the decline in fentanyl trafficking, according to Arthur.
