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Floor Speech
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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President:
Losing a child is the hardest thing that can ever happen to a parent. It's out of the natural order.
Those are the words of a grieving father in Bowling Green, KY. After struggling for years against opioid addiction, his son was killed by a lethal dose of fentanyl in 2021. That year marked the second straight year in which overdose deaths in the Commonwealth set a new, alltime record. Thousands of lives are now claimed each year by a scourge of deadly drugs.
Last week, I met with narcotics officers from across Kentucky who work on the frontlines of this crisis. They told me that rampant flows of illicit drugs had driven the price of a pound of fentanyl down to less than a third of what it cost dealers in 2020. That is right. Working families are paying more for just about everything on President Biden's watch, but drug dealers, with unprecedented access to massive flows of foreign drugs, are literally making out like bandits. The one thing that has gotten cheaper under this administration is the last thing we want Americans buying.
The officers were crystal clear on the bottom line: They won't be able to beat the fentanyl crisis until Washington decides to do something about the southern border crisis. Last fiscal year, Customs and Border Protection apprehended 14,700 pounds of fentanyl, and just a third of the way through the current fiscal year, they have already seized another 12,500 pounds.
But the growing death toll from fentanyl-related overdose tells us that more than enough of this lethal drug is still flowing unchecked. Kentucky isn't the only State losing thousands of its people to lethal drugs produced by China and shipped in by Mexican cartels. Since the Biden administration has ignored a functionally open southern border, every State in America has faced border-State problems.
Last fiscal year, Customs and Border Protection apprehended more than 2.7 million illegal immigrants. That was far and away the highest annual count they had ever seen. Without a coherent, coordinated response from the Biden administration, frontline States from Florida to Texas to Arizona have had to take the response to catch-and-release into their own hands.
These States have dealt with soaring arrivals by busing illegal immigrants to so-called sanctuary jurisdictions in the interior. Colorado's Democratic Governor followed suit.
But setting aside the record-shattering numbers of illegal immigrants who are met and processed at the border, CBP estimates that 1.2 million more people crossed the border and got away since President Biden took office--1.2 million ``got-aways.'' That is two times the population of my hometown of Louisville, just disappearing into our country.
Ninety-eight of the illegal immigrants CBP apprehended last fiscal year were watch-listed terrorists. Ninety-eight of them were watch- listed terrorists. Thousands were convicted criminals. Along with them, as Kentucky's narcotics officers understand all too well, came millions upon millions of lethal doses of fentanyl. I am proud of the Commonwealth's first responders who are fighting back against this truly devastating killer. But until the Biden administration decides to address the border crisis unfolding on its watch, my fellow Kentuckians will continue to fight a steep uphill battle.
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