Taking action “for the children” has become one of the most trite and cynical phrases in American politics. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is the national champion of this practice, shamelessly injecting “for the children” into the most banal of initiatives. Thanks to Washington politicians selling every pet project as “for the children,” we can be slow to react now when real and imminent threats to our children materialize.
Such a threat is now here, and how we respond to it will say a lot about the future of this country.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recently seized more than 200,000 fentanyl pills that were hidden in a secret compartment of a vehicle stopped in Arizona at the Port of Nogales. Almost 50,000 of the pills were rainbow-colored and could easily be mistaken for children’s candy. Federal officials have said the brightly-colored fentanyl, which is also sold as powder and in blocks that resemble children’s sidewalk chalk, is a new phenomenon in drug trafficking and has been seized in 18 states in the last month.
Fentanyl has become America’s scourge and is currently the top cause of death for U.S. adults ages 18 to 45. The highly addictive and deadly drug killed almost 80,000 people between 2020 and 2021. Despite the best efforts of parents, schools, and law enforcement, it would be naïve to assume that none of this candy-like poison will find its way into the hands of children. This is an absolutely unacceptable situation demanding immediate action.
The logical first step would be to address the source of this problem. We don’t need a blue-ribbon committee, as it is common knowledge that the overwhelming majority of fentanyl in the United States arrives through the gaping holes in our southern border.
While this has been a growing problem for many years, it is exponentially worse because of the malicious sabotage of our border security by the Biden Administration. In Joe Biden’s first year in the White House, CBP reported a 1,066 percent increase in fentanyl seized in South Texas. During that time, the agency also seized 87,652 pounds of marijuana, 8,592 pounds of cocaine, and 33,777 pounds of methamphetamine, in addition to 588 pounds of fentanyl.
When one child goes missing in America, our media will often give the case extensive coverage and treat it as a local and national emergency. And yet, that same media is all but silent as the problem of deadly narcotics coming through our border threatens not just our children but all Americans.
The anti-borders crowd has long used children as a political football to advance their agenda. Supporters of Biden’s immigration policy try to exploit people’s humanitarian instincts, arguing that it is cruel to deny entry into the country to innocent children from poor countries who are seeking a better life.
This philosophy has been the greatest gift imaginable to the ruthless drug and human trafficking cartels, as it has enabled them to make record profits in their diabolical trade where children are routinely sexually assaulted and circulated as golden tickets to clients willing to pay the exorbitant fee for illegal passage into the United States. There is nothing humanitarian about permitting this crisis to continue.
Despite the politicization of seemingly every government agency, there are still many good men and women in CBP, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other law enforcement agencies. They see the threat that fentanyl presents to our communities and want to fix the problem. But they have been thwarted, demoralized, and overwhelmed by a torrent of foreign nationals as a result of this White House’s reckless border policy that has turned a relatively stable situation into pure chaos.
The solutions are clear to anyone willing to see the problem absent the lens of partisan politics. The border must be sealed, the wall must be built, and the policies that encourage noncitizens to enter the country illegally must be reversed. America will always welcome immigrants through a legal, manageable process, but it must be done in a way that also benefits our country and our citizens. Cartels that exploit children from other countries and bring toxic drugs across our borders must be treated as the enemies of our country that they are.
If Americans will not stand up and demand that their government protect their children, then our country has no future. In a sea of political issues, protecting our children from the threat of drugs coming across our border is a metaphorical hill worth dying on.