During a visit to the San Diego border region on Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta pushed back against a false narrative that undocumented immigrants are the driving force behind the country’s fentanyl epidemic.
Bonta said data from the federal government shows that the vast majority of fentanyl is smuggled into the country through legal border crossings by U.S. citizens.
“Most of the trafficking and the buyers of fentanyl are American citizens,” Bonta said.
He said conflating immigration with drug smuggling ignores the contributions immigrants have made to the United States.
“My mom’s an immigrant," Bonta said. "I immigrated here when I was 2 months old. Immigrants have made our state great and our country strong."
Yet, powerful Republicans continue to push the narrative. In December, former President Donald Trump said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Several Republicans defended Trump’s statements, specifically citing fentanyl deaths.
“First of all, he didn’t say immigrants were poisoning the blood of this country,” said Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio. “He said illegal immigrants were poisoning the blood of this country, which is objectively and obviously true to anybody who looks at the statistics about fentanyl overdoses.”
In 2022, U.S. citizens made up 89% of convicted fentanyl smugglers, according to data from the United States Sentencing Commission.
Bonta’s comments came during a news conference that highlighted the region’s efforts to combat fentanyl overdoses.
He was joined by San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan, representatives from the San Diego Sheriff’s Department, San Diego Police Department, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other law enforcement agencies.
They gathered in the offices of the San Diego and Imperial Counties High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, or HIDTA, a federal program that provides funding to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in regions known for drug trafficking.
Stephan called for tougher penalties against drug dealers whose product ends up killing people. She also stressed the need for more preventative measures aimed at curbing addiction, saying that criminal enforcement is not the only way out of the fentanyl crisis.
“We need to continue to invest in prevention, and also in protection by having more Narcan available to save lives,” she said, referring to the drug used to treat people who’ve overdosed on opioids.
Bonta made similar remarks, stressing the importance of targeting doctors who overprescribe opioids as well as gangs that sell fentanyl-laced drugs in California.
Mirroring a nationwide trend, overdose deaths in San Diego skyrocketed from 154 in 2019 to 814 in 2021, according to data provided by Stephan. Since then, overdose deaths have remained around 800 each year.
“We’ve somewhat steadied the overdose death rate,” said HIDTA director David King. “Still, over 800 is unacceptable. That is two a day.”
King stressed the importance of working collaboratively on this issue.
“It’s public health, public safety and prevention that is our way forward,” he said. “All three working together.”
