Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen deflected a question about shutting down the U.S.-Mexico border Thursday when pressed about fentanyl trafficking during a Fox News appearance.
The National Center for Health Statistics estimated that 107,543 people died from drug overdoses in 2023, down only 3% from 111,029 in 2022 and the first decrease since 2018, of whom 74,702 and 76,226 were believed to have been killed by synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, according to a May 15 release. Fox News host Neil Cavuto pressed Yellen about the situation on the U.S-Mexico border, asking about shutting it down, during an interview on “Your World with Neil Cavuto.”
“Isn’t the better solution, and maybe it addresses what you’re doing here, Secretary, to just shut down the border – entirely?” Cavuto asked Yellen. “Just lock it down, that’s what Donald Trump wants to do. What do you say?”
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“Well, um, you know, my concern today is with, um, fentanyl trafficking, drug trafficking, and I’d say…” Yellen sputtered.
The Treasury Department created a Counter-Fentanyl Strike Force in December 2023. One kilogram of fentanyl can kill up to a half-million people, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency, which seized over 55 million fentanyl pills in 2023 alone, CBS News reported.
“But if it’s shut down, you know what I mean, Secretary?” Cavuto interrupted. “If it’s shut down entirely, then there goes the trafficking, right?
“Well, look, the most, the most impactful tool we have is, um, to put in place sophisticated drug detection equipment, and that’s what President Biden has done is, um, not to shut down the border entirely,” Yellen claimed.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order on June 4 that halts asylum claims after more than 2,500 people a day cross the U.S.-Mexico border over the course of a week, and does not resume asylum claims until the weekly figure drops to below an average of 1,500 people per day.
United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported the Border Patrol had more than 7 million encounters with illegal immigrants since the start of fiscal year 2021.
The state of the U.S.-Mexico border has become a prominent issue in the 2024 campaign after a series of crimes involving illegal immigrants. Authorities in Oklahoma arrested 23-year-old Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, for the August 2023 murder of 37-year-old Rachel Morin in Maryland June 14.
Authorities in Houston arrested two men Thursday and charged them with capital murder in the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl and are trying to determine their immigration status, according to ABC 13 Houston reporter Brooke Taylor. In February, Jose Antonio Ibarra, an immigrant from Venezuela who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, was arrested by University of Georgia police and charged with murdering 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley.
