Border Patrol seizes enough fentanyl to kill 100 million Americans in under five months

Border Patrol agents have seized enough fentanyl between the ports of entry so far this fiscal year to kill 100 million people, the head of Border Patrol said this week — which would be more people than live in California, Texas and New York.

U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz announced that agents have seized more than 465lbs of the narcotic, which can fatal in tiny doses, between the ports of entry since the start of the fiscal year in October. 

“That’s enough to kill 100 million people,” he said.

Ortiz made the remarks in announcing that agents in the Yuma Sector in Arizona had encountered an illegal migrant carrying 93 lbs worth of the narcotic. Last week, he had noted the dramatic increase in seizures, saying that agents had caught enough fentanyl to kill over 60 million people just in January.

“In the month of January alone, agents seized 55 firearms [and] over 6,800 lbs of narcotics, which included enough fentanyl to kill over 60 million people,” Ortiz said.

With California containing around 40 million people and New York around 20 million, that amount of fentanyl would be enough to kill both states’ populations.

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Fentanyl has been at the epicenter of the U.S. opioid crisis. Officials have said that of the 108,000 overdose deaths in 2021, more than 80,000 were linked with opioids like fentanyl — which is often cut into other drugs, so people don’t know that the drugs they are taking contain it.

Fentanyl is primarily made in Mexico using Chinese precursors and smuggled across the land border. Primarily it is intercepted through ports of entry by CBP’s Office of Field Operations (OFO) as smugglers attempt to bring it to the country in their vehicles, but it is also sometimes stopped by Border Patrol agents in the field.

On Tuesday, Ortiz announced that agents had encountered five bundles of narcotics while tracking a group of smugglers in a remote area of the desert near Nogales, Arizona. That seizure includes 24 lbs of fentanyl, as well as marijuana, meth and cocaine.

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According to CBP’s January update, Border Patrol agents at the northern and southern borders seized 264 lbs of fentanyl in January, up from 66 lbs in January last year and just 5lbs in December.

However, the amount seized when including OFO’s seizures at ports of entry is much higher. Overall, 1,200 lbs of fentanyl were seized in January across all ports of entry, up from 796 lbs from January last year — but down from the massive 6,200 lbs seized in December. Overall this fiscal year so far 12,000 lbs have been seized by OFO.

Seizures at the ports themselves were highlighted this week when CBP officers in Nogales nabbed nearly 200,000 fentanyl pills and two pounds of powder under the seat of a vehicle.

Seizures of the drug are frequently viewed differently by both sides of the political aisle. Democrats and the administration note that seizures mean the drugs have been intercepted, rather than being allowed into the U.S. They, along with immigration activists, frequently stress that the majority of the seizures take place at the ports and accused Republicans of falsely blaming migrants. 

Republicans, meanwhile, use the number to show the ongoing threat at the border both at the ports and between them — and also to raise questions about how much is getting past officers and agents, who are overwhelmed dealing with a historic surge in migrant numbers at the border.

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The January border numbers as a whole showed that there were 156,274 migrant encounters in January — slightly higher than the 154,874 encountered in January last year, and significantly higher than the 78,414 encountered in Jan 2021.

However, officials have noted that the new numbers are a sharp drop from the record 251,978 encounters in December. Ortiz, in his video last week, noted that the number of Border Patrol encounters (130,000) was the lowest since Feb. 2021.

He also said there has been a 32% decrease in “gotaways” — illegal immigrants who have slipped past agents but have been detected in other forms of surveillance. Overall, there have been more than 300,000 gotaways at the southern border. Last fiscal year there were nearly 600,000 for the entire year.

Fox News’ Bill Melugin and Griff Jenkins contributed to this report.