Cartels have severely pumped the brakes on trafficking fentanyl into the United States, and experts say that’s thanks to the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown.
Fentanyl seizures year-over-year at the southern border have been cut roughly in half almost every month since President Donald Trump took office, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data. In June, it was only a 42 percent decrease, but there was a 70 percent drop in May.
According to experts, the plunge isn’t because authorities are catching less fentanyl—it’s because cartels simply aren’t trafficking as much. They said a suite of interconnected Trump policies that enhanced border security and increased targeting of cartels by U.S. and Mexican agencies—under pressure from Trump—have forced the criminal organizations to scale back operations.
“The statistics are a true reflection of the amount of drugs that are coming here,” Center for Immigration Studies resident fellow in law and policy Andrew Arthur told the Washington Free Beacon. “Consequently, the quantity of drugs is dropping because the Trump administration has made it a priority. It has made the Mexican government make it a priority.”
“The cartels are deliberately tapering off on the amount of fentanyl they’re sending to the United States,” he added. “The cartels are scared.”
The findings underscore a stark contrast with how former president Joe Biden handled border issues. The Biden administration’s permissive approach led to a crisis resulting in more than 8 million encounters at the southern border. According to Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, the Biden administration seized enough fentanyl to kill 14 billion people—but that only counts what was caught.
Trump’s pressure on Mexico to clamp down on cartels is at the heart of the decline in fentanyl trafficking, according to Arthur. After the Trump administration announced it was imposing a 25 percent tariff on all goods over Mexico’s failure to stymie the flow of drugs into the United States, the nation deployed 10,000 National Guard troops to its northern border.
Mexico quickly arrested dozens of high-level cartel operatives and raided drug labs. In Sinaloa, a fentanyl production epicenter, cartels temporarily halted manufacturing in key areas amid the heat.
“We’re leaning on the Mexican government. We’re giving them intelligence of where it’s coming from, and we’re leaving it to the Mexican government to clean up their problem,” Arthur said. He emphasized that this upstream disruption has taken pressure off U.S. border agents.
Trump’s measures to secure the border have further hampered fentanyl trafficking. Illegal crossings have plummeted since the administration deployed thousands of troops to the southern border and expanded drone fleets. Removing legal pathways created by the Biden administration, suspending access to the asylum system, and mass deportation have also deterred illegal migration attempts.
Arthur said that decreased border crossings “absolutely” make it harder for cartels to traffic drugs.
“The fewer illegal crossings you have, the more resources that Border Patrol agents have to detect and seize illegal drugs,” he said. The increased focus leads to “fewer illegal drugs that smugglers attempt to smuggle.”
Trump’s order to designate several drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations has also helped stifle the crime syndicates. The move allowed the Department of the Treasury to issue sanctions on related entities, including on a dozen Mexican companies that supply Los Chapitos, a Sinaloa cartel faction, with fentanyl precursors.
Arthur said the terrorist designation indicates that both the United States and Mexico are putting increased attention on the criminal organizations.
“The one thing that the cartels don’t want is attention from the United States government,” he said. “More attention, fewer attempts to move drugs into the United States.”
The Trump administration also told Congress this month it was in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, calling smugglers “unlawful combatants.” The determination was used to justify strikes the U.S. military has carried out on narco-trafficking vessels operating in the Caribbean Sea.
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin credited the Trump administration’s multi-pronged strategy for the reduction in fentanyl trafficking.
“President Trump has taken the gloves off in the war against the evil cartels and criminal terrorist gangs who smuggle deadly narcotics like fentanyl into our country. Under his and Secretary Noem’s leadership, we are taking the fight directly to drug smugglers everywhere they are found: whether that is at the border, within the United States, or even beyond,” McLaughlin told the Free Beacon in a statement. She noted that the administration has “surged resources” across the border “to dramatically expand our capacity to crack down on this deadly trade.”
Fentanyl seizures under the Biden administration, meanwhile, skyrocketed, along with illegal border crossings. Between fiscal 2022 and 2023, seizures rose by 89 percent. Almost 64,000 pounds of fentanyl were confiscated across Biden’s tenure, according to the Trump Department of Homeland Security. Fentanyl seizures were trending downward at the end of the Biden administration, but only marginally compared with more recent data.
Biden allowed cartels to become “billion-dollar businesses,” said Cooper Smith, the director for homeland security and immigration at the America First Policy Institute.
“They know that America is a key market for them, for all of this. They’re trying to adapt to the new Trump environment of enforcement, to get their product here, or they’re trying to find a new product that will escape being detected,” Smith told the Free Beacon.
He said Trump’s moves have pushed cartels to look for markets outside the United States, like Europe, while trying to bring other drugs into America. Methamphetamine seizures at the southern border have been ticking up in recent months, though only marginally compared to the drop in fentanyl seizures, according to CBP data.
“The reason that they’re doing that is because the Trump administration is focused on fentanyl, and so consequently they don’t want to draw the attention of the United States government, and therefore are looking to send it elsewhere,” Arthur said. “They’re trying to make up the difference with methamphetamine, which the Trump administration is not quite as focused on, at least not at this moment. And they’re doing that so as to not get in the crosshairs of the United States government.”
While methamphetamines are still dangerous and are sometimes mixed by drug dealers with fentanyl, the synthetic opioid is far more lethal.
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