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Recent busts of the powerful and deadly opioid have drawn more attention to the border as Biden officials wrestle with enormous increases in migration.

But the loudest voices in the debate are trying to connect migration with fentanyl smuggling, despite new Customs and Border Protection data showing the busiest areas for migration over the last year are 1,000 miles from the busiest areas for fentanyl smuggling. As a result, much of the attention is focused on areas where 5% of fentanyl was seized in May, for example, while obscuring where the other 95% was seized.

The new data on the CBP website allowed the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ to track migration and fentanyl smuggling along the U.S.-Mexico border since late 2017, a task that would have required numerous, time-consuming public records requests prior to the monthly updates CBP now provides for each area of the border. The Star’s analysis offers a much clearer picture of fentanyl smuggling than the public could gather from statements made by lawmakers or most national news coverage.

The CBP data shows:

The vast majority of fentanyl seizures occur at legal ports of entry.

Migration and fentanyl seizures rarely overlap and largely occur at opposite ends of the border. The busiest areas for fentanyl seizures are near San Diego and in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥. The busiest areas for migration are in South Texas.

Fentanyl seizures have gone up in remote areas, but on a much smaller scale than at ports of entry. There are long stretches of the border where no fentanyl was seized.

Fentanyl seizures spiked last summer. The monthly average since President Biden took office in January is slightly less than it was late last year.

Seizures jump

Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid that public-health officials linked to tens of thousands of overdose deaths last year.

The drug poses a unique risk, due to the fact that tiny amounts can be fatal and it often is mixed with other drugs, leading to overdose deaths when a user doesn’t realize they are taking fentanyl. In other instances, a fatal dose is inadvertently pressed into counterfeit pills.

The vast majority of fentanyl seizures along U.S. land and sea borders are made at the U.S.-Mexico border. Drug traffickers in Mexico often import chemical ingredients from China and manufacture the fentanyl in Mexico before smuggling it into the United States, according to federal law enforcement officials.

Seizures of fentanyl at the U.S.-Mexico border jumped from about 1,900 pounds in fiscal 2018 to 4,500 pounds in fiscal 2020, according to CBP data. More than 7,000 pounds were seized from October 2020 to May.

Fentanyl seizures jumped last summer from about 230 pounds in May 2020 to about 680 pounds in June 2020. Since then, the monthly average has remained high. The average from June to December was about 845 pounds, before dropping slightly to about 785 pounds since January.

As fentanyl seizures rose over the past several years, CBP data shows different dynamics developed in Texas and New Mexico compared with ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ and California.

ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ and California accounted for about 95% of fentanyl seizures and 33% of encounters with migrants in May. Texas and New Mexico accounted for about 5% of fentanyl seizures and 67% of encounters with migrants.

Skewed scale

Republican lawmakers from more than a dozen states have dominated the debate about fentanyl at the border in recent months, judging by news coverage, statements in the Congressional Record, op-eds and social media posts.

When it comes to fentanyl seizures at the border, Democratic lawmakers focus on beefing up screening technology at ports of entry, as ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s Sen. Kyrsten Sinema did at a recent Senate hearing, but otherwise have remained largely silent about the spike.

At a recent Senate hearing, Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said better technology at ports is “helpful,� but “it certainly doesn’t address the concern that I have about the fact that the Biden administration doesn’t appear to have any concerns whatsoever about the current crisis.�

Despite months of large increases in migration and the spike in fentanyl seizures, Vice President Kamala Harris, who Biden made his point person on immigration in March, did not visit the border until late June. She spent a few hours in El Paso, which is neither the busiest area for migrant encounters nor fentanyl smuggling.

The vocal Republican lawmakers are correct that the border is seeing an important shift in drug smuggling, with more hard drugs smuggled between ports of entry, but they overstate the scale of that shift, CBP data shows.

The shift in smuggling between ports of entry came as marijuana smuggling in the desert plummeted and smugglers started replacing marijuana backpacks with packages of hard drugs, as the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ reported in August 2020. The busiest area for migration, the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector, has seen a small increase in fentanyl seizures.

Even with Border Patrol agents seeing more fentanyl in the desert and at checkpoints north of the border, CBP statistics show those seizures pale in comparison to seizures at ports of entry.

Since October, customs officers at ports of entry seized about 6,300 pounds of fentanyl, compared to about 800 pounds seized by Border Patrol agents in the desert and at checkpoints.

Drug-trafficking organizations often rely on ports of entry, rather than use desert areas, as the “easiest and fastest way� to move drugs quickly to meet the high level of demand in the United States, said long-time border researcher Gabriella Sanchez.

The vocal Republicans also present the border as a monolith, rather than a 2,000-mile long region where a variety of migration and drug-smuggling patterns unfold in different areas.

In a typical statement in recent months, House Republicans said in a June 14 tweet: “In May, 934 POUNDS of fentanyl was seized at our southern border, this is a 300% INCREASE from May 2020. Biden’s border crisis becomes more deadly with each passing day and Vice President Kamala Harris is still MIA.�

The vast majority of that 934 pounds was seized at ports of entry in California and ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, rather than spread out along the length of the border.

In Texas and New Mexico, Border Patrol agents seized 39 pounds of fentanyl between ports of entry in May, about the same amount as they seized in all of fiscal 2020. That is a marked increase since last year, but still far less than the 457 pounds seized at ports of entry near San Diego and 353 pounds at ports in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ in May.

Common claim

Another common claim from Republican lawmakers is that fentanyl smugglers are using migrant families to distract Border Patrol agents.

“They use vulnerable individuals, particularly families and unaccompanied children who require significant processing time, as a way to distract Border Patrol agents to allow them to then move large quantities of fentanyl into the United States,� Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, and Rep. John Katko, a New York Republican, wrote in a June 11 op-ed.

After ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Gov. Doug Ducey and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared a crisis at the border and asked the other 48 states to send law enforcement resources, six members of Congress wrote to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on June 25, asking her to respond to the request.

“Cartels have flooded illegal drugs into the country, as resources to combat drug smuggling are diverted to manage the mass numbers of illegal immigrants. As of April, more fentanyl was seized by authorities at the border in 2021 than in all of 2020. This is unconscionable,� the Congress members wrote to Whitmer.

The busiest areas for families and unaccompanied children are more than 1,000 miles away from the busiest areas for fentanyl smuggling, CBP data shows. In fact, Border Patrol agents did not seize any fentanyl in five sectors that span 840 miles of border and saw nearly half of the migrant encounters in May.

One of those areas was the Yuma Sector.

Lawmakers lump together migration and drugs and unite them around “threads of fearâ€� to justify certain actions, said Javier Osorio, assistant professor at the University of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ School of Government and Public Policy. “It’s a winning formula.â€�

“The problem is that everything gets simplified,� Osorio said. “This is one of the key aspects of rhetoric. It’s not about rationalizing the problems and understanding them in order to address them properly, it’s to profit politically from emotions.�

Sanchez said uniting migration and drug smuggling works because it’s “simple� and “catchy.�

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, posted a tweet on July 3: “Fentanyl is pouring into our country from the border. We need to finish building the wall so we can end the opioid crisis.�

Two weeks before Blackburn posted that tweet, she asked the head of a federal anti-drug smuggling task force in Texas about fentanyl at a June 22 hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The main producers of fentanyl in Mexico are the Sinaloa Cartel and the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion in western Mexico, said Antonio Garcia, executive director of the South Texas High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.

“So therefore, in South Texas, although we are seeing an increase in fentanyl, we’re not seeing it to the degree that our counterparts in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ and Southern California are,â€� Garcia said.

Fentanyl is “not our number one drug of concern� in Texas, although the fact that fentanyl is mixed with “pretty much every other drug� is cause for worry, Garcia said.

“Our number one drug of concern right now is methamphetamine,� Garcia said.

Context needed

The national news coverage largely has not caught up with the new data, either. A notable exception was a report last week by the Washington Post that detailed how migrants from different countries go to different parts of the border.

A more typical news report in recent months was a story last week by NBC ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ pointing to a “staggering 4,000% increaseâ€� in fentanyl smuggling near El Paso, from one pound of fentanyl seized in 2018 to 41 pounds seized since October. The story did not add the important context that 9,200 pounds of fentanyl were seized at ports near San Diego from 2018 to May.

In another news report, ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Attorney General Mark Brnovich told Fox ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ on June 11: “I know as a prosecutor, a law enforcement official, that the cartels are exploiting not only the people, they’re exploiting this crisis to dramatically increase the amount of fentanyl and heroin coming into our country.â€�

As Brnovich spoke, video footage showed migrant families with toddlers crossing the river near Del Rio, Texas.

CBP officials did not report seizing any fentanyl in the Del Rio Sector in the past three years.