On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks said that while drug seizures have increased, “This isn’t because more narcotics are being smuggled into the country. This is what was getting away when the Border Patrol had their hands tied and couldn’t get out there and do their job.”
Co-host Dana Perino asked, [relevant exchange begins around 2:20] “[W]e’ve talked a lot about fentanyl. But now meth is on the rise. Look at this seizure here, it was 1,600 pounds of methamphetamine seized by CBP officers. March drug seizures, we have fentanyl up 24%, cocaine up 32%, but meth up 72%. Why is that?”
Banks responded, “I’m glad you brought that up. I really want to paint this picture. This isn’t because more narcotics are being smuggled into the country. This is what was getting away when the Border Patrol had their hands tied and couldn’t get out there and do their job. What you’re seeing now is that, because Border Patrol agents are actually out there doing law enforcement functions, we’re now interdicting these narcotics. This is what was flowing into this country daily under the Biden administration. Now that we’ve been able to reduce the numbers of illegal immigration through the great work of…President Trump removing some of these absurd policies that prevented us from doing our job and…Secretary Noem empowering us to go out and do our jobs, we’re actually doing the enforcement and we’re interdicting these drugs that we weren’t out there interdicting in the previous administration.”
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