Dhs Opioid Detection Resilience Act of 2019

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, U.S. Customs and Border Protection law enforcement officers are the first line of defense in preventing the illicit flow of drugs and contraband from entering our country.

I walked the border with my brothers and sisters of the thin blue line, and I have seen what CBP is up against. I can tell you firsthand that our cartel adversaries are ruthless and steadfast in their determination to exploit our laws and poison our communities.

Transnational drug traffickers operate like a business, always looking to capitalize on products high in demand and high with profit margin. Today, their focus is fentanyl, a drug 100 times more powerful than morphine. Just 2 milligrams are enough to be lethal.

Fentanyl and its analogs are being produced mostly in China, but also increasingly in Mexico. Illicit opioids enter the United States through the mail, concealed within vehicles or cargo coming through the ports of entry, and in backpacks of cartel drug runners.

Initially, Chinese drug traffickers were so confident that fentanyl would not be interdicted they sent stacks of it through the mail. The CBP improved, their targeting improved, and cartels were forced to change their approach, sending smaller quantities and rerouting packages through freight forwarders and other countries to mask their point of origin.

The 2018 DEA threat assessment stated that the purity level of the fentanyl coming across the land border is, on average, less than 10 percent pure. However, a recent DHS Office of Inspector General report found that the CBP's small-scale chemical screening devices cannot identify fentanyl purity levels of 10 percent or less. This is crucial.

The IG also found that there was no policy or centralized database in place to ensure chemical screening devices had up-to-date spectral libraries essential to ensuring all analogs and new opioid forms can be detected. That is why I am pleased to see the House take up my bill, H.R. 4761, the DHS Opioid Detection Resilience Act of 2019.

My bill addresses the gaps in CBP's opioid detection capability by requiring the Customs and Border Protection commissioner to implement a strategy to ensure chemical screening devices can identify narcotics in an operational environment with low purity levels.

H.R. 4761 also requires DHS to develop a centralized spectral database for chemical screening devices to ensure unity of effort across all components they encounter when opioids cross the field.

CBP works tirelessly to prevent this poison from reaching American communities, and this bill helps law enforcement carry out that mission.

I thank Congresswoman Clarke and Congressmen Rogers, McCaul, King, Rose, Katko, and Joyce for signing on as original cosponsors and for their support of this important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to make the gentlewoman aware that I have no further speakers and that I am prepared to close.

I urge the adoption of the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. CLARKE of New York.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 4761 is a bipartisan measure that received the full support of the Committee on Homeland Security to address a capability need identified by the DHS inspector general. The DHS Opioid Detection Resilience Act of 2019 seeks to ensure that CBP personnel have the best and most up-to-date technology to detect and prevent opioids from entering the country and our communities.

Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of H.R. 4761, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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