The US Border Patrol took Senator Janet Nguyen on a tour Monday, showing where 230,941 people including drug dealers and human traffickers have illegally crossed into California the last fiscal year ending in September.
The Senator saw a quarter-mile area with no barrier in a mountainous region and also at the nation’s most southwest border point where the wall abruptly ends a few hundred feet into the ocean. Border agents recorded 736 smuggling events last year where people used the ocean to enter America.
“Our border agents in San Diego have thankfully stopped drug smugglers, gang members and people who are on the terror watch list,” Senator Janet Nguyen said. “But many more are getting through and now live in our communities. Others have brought fentanyl to poison our young people.”
The tour showed a stark example of how the border fence – 18 feet tall in some places – has been supplemented by a 30-foot wall built during the Trump administration. The San Diego land border sector is 60 miles long, with 50 miles of new wall and three areas with gaps totaling 10 miles.
The majority of Fentanyl entering the United States comes across the San Ysidro port of entry, the busiest in the Western Hemisphere. Federal agents seized 1,100 pounds of the drug last year. Agents seized 1,285 pounds of the drug in this area last year.
Just two weeks ago, Border Patrol agents seized 81 pounds of fentanyl during a traffic stop in Temecula. And another 776 pounds were found in a San Diego shipment of green beans last April.
“We have a huge border and unless you see it, it’s hard to comprehend the scope of this problem,” Senator Janet Nguyen said. “Border agents work incredibly hard but without increase funding for staff, it will be impossible to stem this tide. I was relieved to learn that agents work closely with local law enforcement to arrest fentanyl dealers.”
Senator Janet Nguyen wrote the language for a new law that increases prison sentences for large fentanyl dealers up to 25 years, depending on the amount of the seizure. She vigorously seeks increased public awareness and holds weekly townhall meetings in her district to distribute Narcan, which is used to save lives in case of an overdose.