Once again, the political podium has been used to attack undocumented immigrants with false claims.
Last Saturday, after suffering a resounding defeat to Donald Trump in the primary in South Carolina, her home state, Republican candidate Nikki Haley told her followers that she would continue campaigning and painted a dark picture in the United States, complaining about the economy, the state of education and the purchasing power of people.
Haley also used her speech to blame undocumented immigrants for the fentanyl crisis, the synthetic drug that killed more than 70,000 people in the country in 2022 alone.
“Nine million undocumented immigrants have arrived at our borders with enough fentanyl to kill every American,” Haley told supporters.
That statement is, clearly,
a falsehood
.
Associating the entry of fentanyl with the arrival of migrants is a lie that Republicans have repeated again and again in recent months.
Three immigrants hold hands after surrendering to US authorities.
when crossing the border with Mexico, in a 2021 image. Gregory Bull / AP
Although the amount of fentanyl and other drugs entering the southern border has increased in recent years, experts and federal agencies have explained that
the drugs mainly arrive through authorized ports of entry in private vehicles driven by US citizens.
“
Our research tells us that the vast majority of fentanyl arrives through ports of entry, particularly to California and Arizona,” Anne Milgram, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), said during a congressional hearing.
[The number of immigrants who enter the US illegally does not exceed the number of births]
A similar explanation was offered to Congress by James Mandryck, deputy deputy commissioner of the Border Patrol, who explained in July 2023 that most illicit drugs, including fentanyl, enter the country through official ports of entry, “hidden in vehicles.” of passengers or belongings, hidden in commercial trucks and transported by pedestrians.”
These ports of entry, which are heavily guarded, are not the routes most undocumented migrants use to enter the country.
According to federal data, 82% of people who entered without authorization through the southern border in 2021 did so by crossing at places between ports of entry.
Nikki Haley in Charleston, South Carolina, on February 24, 2024.Chris Carlson / AP
Neither Milgram nor Mandryck pointed out in their testimonies that undocumented immigrants were responsible for or part of the problem of fentanyl trafficking across the southern border.
Instead, the deputy assistant commissioner explained that in recent years Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has deployed nearly 5,000 x-ray and gamma-ray imaging devices to detect the presence of drugs such as fentanyl "in belongings of passengers, cargo containers, commercial trucks, rail cars and privately owned vehicles, as well as packages and international mail."
Only 0.02% of people arrested by the Border Patrol for crossing the border illegally possessed fentanyl, according to data analyzed by the Cato Institute in 2022.
[New York City offers prepaid debit cards to migrants and not credit cards as they falsely say on networks]
According to the institute, which analyzed federal data, more than 90% of fentanyl seizures occur at legal crossing points on the southern border or in vehicles intercepted by authorities in the interior of the country, “
and not on illegal migration routes.”
.
“US citizens (who are subject to less scrutiny) when they cross legally are the best smugglers,” concludes the entity based in Washington DC.
Nikki Haley also mentioned that 9 million people have crossed the border illegally, falsely saying they were all bringing fentanyl.
It's unclear where she got that figure, but she used it when attacking President Joe Biden.
If you were referring to border crossings during the Biden administration, your calculations are also incorrect: Since January 2021, when Biden took office, the Border Patrol has recorded 7.3 million “encounters” of undocumented migrants.
But that figure includes incidents in which the same person may have crossed one or more times.
In addition, according to federal data, the Biden Administration expelled 2.5 million people through Title 42, the measure that the Government used to expel migrants expeditiously using the pretext of COVID-19 and which ended in May 2023.
[Republican congressman blames Biden for a migrant caravan that arrived at the border when Trump was president]
Fentanyl is a big problem in the United States, there's no doubt about that.
As Anne Milgram explained in Congress, the Mexican cartels of Sinaloa and Jalisco “control the vast majority of the global drug supply chain, from manufacturing to distribution.”
These groups buy the chemical precursors in China and take them to Mexican territory to manufacture the fentanyl that they then send to United States territory.
However, it is false that undocumented immigrants are the ones transporting drugs across the border.