According to the latest data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the number of illegal immigrants stopped along the southwestern border went up to nearly 165,000 last month. That’s an increase of 6.6% over January.
CBP also reported a rise in drug seizures along the southern border in February. According to the data, CBP seized 21.4 thousand pounds of illegal drugs in February, up from 18.6 thousand pounds in January, although those numbers are still much lower than was reported in 2021.
During a Senate Armed Services hearing about strategic competition and security cooperation in the Western Hemisphere last week, U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn), who sits on the Armed Services Committee, said the United States isn’t doing enough to stop illegal drugs from entering the country.
“At the end of the day, what do we got to do?” he asked. “I mean, we’re losing. We’re losing the war on drugs down at the border, and it’s coming across right and left, and we’ll have people die around here today, overdosing, around our building here.”
Tuberville tried to put the number of overdose deaths in perspective, pointing out the true extent of the problem.
“You know we got a lot of bad things going on around the world,” he said. “You know we’re all worried about Ukraine and the people there, it’s a shame what’s going on. We’ll lose more in the first six months of overdoses in this country than they’ll lose, and it doesn’t seem like we’re much worried about it.”
The senator also discussed the possible dangers of illegal fentanyl showing up in communities in the United States.
“It’s absolutely awful and nobody seems to be worried about it,” he protested. “We have got to do something about it and we’re going to lose, we’re going to have a catastrophe in this country of somebody putting [fentanyl] in our water supply, putting it in air systems, we got to wake up and smell the roses.”
Tuberville also warned against ending Title 42, which would the end the quick expulsion of migrants at the border due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re hearing at the end of March that Title 42 is going to expire,” he said. “Right now we’re seeing five to six thousand a week come across the border. I think that would probably enhance people coming across. It’s going to be tougher to stop the drugs. It’s going to be tougher to stop the human trafficking. It’s really going to get bad.”
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