The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Opioid seizure on rise, report says
WASHINGTON — United States Border Patrol agents seized more than 3,500 pounds of opioids between 2013 and 2017, mostly near the southern border of the United States, and seizures of fentanyl by this federal agency were up by almost 72 percent in a single year, according to a new report by investigators for Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.
The report is the latest in a series on the proliferation of opioid use by McCaskill, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Earlier this month, McCaskill reported that another federal agency, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, seized almost 1,400 pounds of illicit fentanyl in 2017, double that of the year before.
McCaskill’s new report on the Border Patrol found that agents there also “play an important role in stopping opioids,” a synopsis of the new report says. Among its findings:
■ The amount of opioids seized by Border Patrol agents almost doubled from 579 pounds in 2013 to 1,135 pounds in 2017. About 98 percent were interdicted along the southern border.
■ Most of the opioids seized in the U.S. were “well inside the United States, rather than along the border,” with about 70 percent of seizures occurring more than 10 miles inside the U.S.
“The majority of those seizures took place in western sectors on the southern border where fencing covers most of the border and where large infrastructure investments have been made to prevent illegal crossings, indicating that opioids are crossing the border through ports of entry and are later being seized by Border Patrol agents at Border Patrol checkpoints,” McCaskill’s report says.