According to Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, the Biden administration seized enough fentanyl to kill 14 billion people—but that only counts what was caught.

By Jessica Costescu, The Washington Free Beacon

Cartels have severely pumped the brakes on trafficking fentanyl into the United States, and experts say that’s thanks to the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown.

Fentanyl seizures year-over-year at the southern border have been cut roughly in half almost every month since President Donald Trump took office, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.

In June, it was only a 42 percent decrease, but there was a 70 percent drop in May.

According to experts, the plunge isn’t because authorities are catching less fentanyl—it’s because cartels simply aren’t trafficking as much.

They said a suite of interconnected Trump policies that enhanced border security and increased targeting of cartels by U.S. and Mexican agencies—under pressure from Trump—have forced the criminal organizations to scale back operations.

“The statistics are a true reflection of the amount of drugs that are coming here,” Center for Immigration Studies resident fellow in law and policy Andrew Arthur told the Washington Free Beacon.

“Consequently, the quantity of drugs is dropping because the Trump administration has made it a priority. It has made the Mexican government make it a priority.”

“The cartels are deliberately tapering off on the amount of fentanyl they’re sending to the United States,” he added. “The cartels are scared.”

The findings underscore a stark contrast with how former president Joe Biden handled border issues.

The Biden administration’s permissive approach led to a crisis resulting in more than 8 million encounters at the southern border.

According to Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, the Biden administration seized enough fentanyl to kill 14 billion people—but that only counts what was caught.

Trump’s pressure on Mexico to clamp down on cartels is at the heart of the decline in fentanyl trafficking, according to Arthur.

After the Trump administration announced it was imposing a 25 percent tariff on all goods over Mexico’s failure to stymie the flow of drugs into the United States, the nation deployed 10,000 National Guard troops to its northern border.

Mexico quickly arrested dozens of high-level cartel operatives and raided drug labs. In Sinaloa, a fentanyl production epicenter, cartels temporarily halted manufacturing in key areas amid the heat.

“We’re leaning on the Mexican government. We’re giving them intelligence of where it’s coming from, and we’re leaving it to the Mexican government to clean up their problem,” Arthur said.

He emphasized that this upstream disruption has taken pressure off U.S. border agents.

Trump’s measures to secure the border have further hampered fentanyl trafficking. Illegal crossings have plummeted since the administration deployed thousands of troops to the southern border and expanded drone fleets.

Removing legal pathways created by the Biden administration, suspending access to the asylum system, and mass deportation have also deterred illegal migration attempts.

Arthur said that decreased border crossings “absolutely” make it harder for cartels to traffic drugs.

“The fewer illegal crossings you have, the more resources that Border Patrol agents have to detect and seize illegal drugs,” he said. The increased focus leads to “fewer illegal drugs that smugglers attempt to smuggle.”

Trump’s order to designate several drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations has also helped stifle the crime syndicates.

The move allowed the Department of the Treasury to issue sanctions on related entities, including on a dozen Mexican companies that supply Los Chapitos, a Sinaloa cartel faction, with fentanyl precursors.

Arthur said the terrorist designation indicates that both the United States and Mexico are putting increased attention on the criminal organizations.

“The one thing that the cartels don’t want is attention from the United States government,” he said. “More attention, fewer attempts to move drugs into the United States.”

The Trump administration also told Congress this month it was in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, calling smugglers “unlawful combatants.”

The determination was used to justify strikes the U.S. military has carried out on narco-trafficking vessels operating in the Caribbean Sea.

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin credited the Trump administration’s multi-pronged strategy for the reduction in fentanyl trafficking.

“President Trump has taken the gloves off in the war against the evil cartels and criminal terrorist gangs who smuggle deadly narcotics like fentanyl into our country. Under his and Secretary Noem’s leadership, we are taking the fight directly to drug smugglers everywhere they are found: whether that is at the border, within the United States, or even beyond,” McLaughlin told the Free Beacon in a statement.

She noted that the administration has “surged resources” across the border “to dramatically expand our capacity to crack down on this deadly trade.”

Fentanyl seizures under the Biden administration, meanwhile, skyrocketed, along with illegal border crossings.

Between fiscal 2022 and 2023, seizures rose by 89 percent. Almost 64,000 pounds of fentanyl were confiscated across Biden’s tenure, according to the Trump Department of Homeland Security.

Fentanyl seizures were trending downward at the end of the Biden administration, but only marginally compared with more recent data.

Biden allowed cartels to become “billion-dollar businesses,” said Cooper Smith, the director for homeland security and immigration at the America First Policy Institute.

“They know that America is a key market for them, for all of this. They’re trying to adapt to the new Trump environment of enforcement, to get their product here, or they’re trying to find a new product that will escape being detected,” Smith told the Free Beacon.

He said Trump’s moves have pushed cartels to look for markets outside the United States, like Europe, while trying to bring other drugs into America.

Methamphetamine seizures at the southern border have been ticking up in recent months, though only marginally compared to the drop in fentanyl seizures, according to CBP data.

“The reason that they’re doing that is because the Trump administration is focused on fentanyl, and so consequently they don’t want to draw the attention of the United States government, and therefore are looking to send it elsewhere,” Arthur said.

“They’re trying to make up the difference with methamphetamine, which the Trump administration is not quite as focused on, at least not at this moment. And they’re doing that so as to not get in the crosshairs of the United States government.”

While methamphetamines are still dangerous and are sometimes mixed by drug dealers with fentanyl, the synthetic opioid is far more lethal.

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Attorney General Pam Bondi revealed that the United States seized 11.5 kilos of fentanyl and approximately 3 million fentanyl pills in a massive drug bust in New Mexico, which also led to the arrest of six high-level cartel members.

.@AGPamBondi announces the takedown of a massive drug and weapons trafficking organization in New Mexico, operated by the Sinaloa cartel — resulting in the largest fentanyl seizure in our nation's history and the arrests of six high-level cartel members illegally in the U.S. pic.twitter.com/6qdSd0bsCu

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 6, 2025

The post WATCH: DOJ announces largest fentanyl seizure in US history appeared first on World Israel News.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were an estimated 74,702 overdose deaths from the synthetic opioid last year.

By Jewish Breaking News

Iran has found a new way to harm Americans and it’s not through bombs or guns.

For three years, Nemesis operated on the dark web, accessible only to those with specialized browsers designed to mask their identity and location.

With 1,000 vendors selling narcotics, counterfeit identification documents, and hacking services, the site processed nearly $30 million in sales.

Nemesis had just one boss named Behrouz Parsarad. Working beyond the reach of American law enforcement in Iran, he designed the marketplace, controlled its operations, and handled all its finances.

When international authorities finally seized Nemesis’ servers in March, more than 150,000 user accounts and over 1,100 seller accounts were reported to be registered on the site.

Particularly concerning to authorities was the selling of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid responsible for tens of thousands of American overdose deaths annually.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were an estimated 74,702 overdose deaths from the synthetic opioid last year.

It’s considered to be 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Just 2 milligrams of fentanyl is considered a lethal dose.

Despite losing his marketplace, Parsarad hasn’t lost his criminal connections. Intelligence gathered in the weeks following the takedown shows the Iranian operator maintaining contact with his vendor network in an effort to relaunch.

In response, Treasury officials moved on Wednesday to impose sanctions on his American assets including 49 cryptocurrency wallets.

“As the administrator of the Nemesis darknet marketplace, Parsarad sought to build—and continues to try to re-establish—a safe haven to facilitate the production, sale, and shipment of illegal narcotics like fentanyl and other synthetic opioids,” said Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley T. Smith.

“Treasury, in partnership with U.S. law enforcement, will use all available tools to dismantle these darknet marketplaces and hold accountable the individuals who oversee them.”

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Medical authorities say 2023 saw more than 112,000 fentanyl-related deaths in our nation.

By Lawrence Kadish, Gatestone Institute

In a recent national poll, more than half of responding Americans believe that China is deliberately exporting fentanyl to the United States for the purpose of harming, or even destabilizing our nation.

Were that true, some might reasonably describe that strategy as an act of war.

For China, it would be historic payback time.

Having lost a generation, a nation, and an empire to opium introduced by Imperial Britain during the 1800s, no one knows better than the Chinese that a drug scourge can bring a country literally to its knees.

So, it should not surprise anyone that they have become a center of illicit fentanyl manufacturing, with drug traffickers exporting the killing chemical to the one nation China must strategically injure if they are to make good on their intent to dominate the rest of the 21st Century: the United States.

More than simply turning a blind eye to those who are creating the drugs, the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party reported this spring that China is directly supporting the creation of fentanyl and other drugs by offering “tax rebates and other financial benefits” to those manufacturers, as long as those drugs are sold outside of China:

“According to the report, Chinese officials encourage production of precursor chemicals by giving ‘monetary grants and awards to companies openly trafficking illicit fentanyl materials.'”

One does not have to be a CIA analyst to appreciate the “why” behind such an action.

The cause and effect have not been lost on the American public.

That recent poll, undertaken by the nationally respected polling company McLaughlin & Associates, revealed that a stunning 52.4 percent of Americans suspect that the Chinese are exporting the deadly drug for the specific purpose of destabilizing our society.

Some 19.4% disagreed and 28.3% did not have an opinion.

When asked if our diplomatic relations with China should be dependent on Beijing shutting down those fentanyl mills, 54.5 percent of those polled emphatically said yes, while 21.3% said no and 24.2% did not know one way or the other.

The national survey also revealed that more than a third of Americans know someone whose life has been harmed or taken by fentanyl.

More than some dry accountant’s statistic, when approximately 100 million Americans know first-hand how this drug is destroying lives, then it is time to recognize the extent of the crisis.

To underscore the threat, medical authorities say 2023 saw more than 112,000 fentanyl-related deaths in our nation.

They warn that it has been more pervasive than the crack and opioid epidemics of the past.

While our two major party presidential candidates currently address issues that range from inflation to the border crisis, they need to be prepared to speak to this calculated assault on our nation, our society, and our future.

They need to state what direct and affirmative action they will take if assuming occupancy of the Oval Office to make it clear to China that more than tariffs, sanctions or exports, our relationship with China will be judged by how and when they shut down this flow of poison.

Ironically, this poll is being released at a time when U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan is in Beijing to try and improve the contentious relationship between our two countries.

There is no public acknowledgement that China’s fentanyl assault on the United States will be on their agenda, but it needs to be.

Few nations know better than China what drugs can do to a society.

They still reflect on what they describe as a “century of humiliation” created by the introduction of opium into their empire.

It is clear they believe it is now America’s turn.

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