Editor,
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is unfit to be in a leadership position. She lacks a depth of understanding on the issue. In a recent interview given in the summer of 2023, Perez stated, “Nobody stays awake at night thinking about the southern border.” Nothing she stated after that could justify this mindset.
The southern border problem is one of the biggest problems the U.S. is currently facing. Aside from being a significant national security threat, an open border contributes to significant humanitarian suffering and drug overdose deaths in this country. There are multiple crises occurring as a result of the open southern border. One of the most significant ramifications is the fentanyl crisis.
Criminals move both fentanyl and xylazine rapidly and easily across the southern border and into the United States. Fentanyl is a factor in more than half of overdose deaths.
The late-Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Sen. Chuck Grassley co-led the fentanyl prevention and awareness legislation passed in 2023 urging the U.S. to enforce laws, hold China accountable, but most importantly, secure the southern border in order to help address the issue.
At the end of 2022, the Drug Enforcement Agency announced it had seized more than 379 million potentially deadly doses of fentanyl. That means enough deadly doses for every single American. In Washington state alone, there was a significant increase of opioid use in Washington. Even King County agrees that the fentanyl issue is due to the southern border. According to the Seattle Times, “Over 1,050 of the county’s nearly 1,300 fatal overdoses this year involved fentanyl, sounding yet another alarm about the potency of the deadly synthetic opioid that’s increasingly arriving in King County in powder and rock form, smuggled over the U.S. border from clandestine drug labs in Mexico.”
We need leadership that will prioritize securing the southern border and stopping the flow of fentanyl from entering our communities.
Barry Sullivan
Vancouver
