MORGANTOWN – West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against the Biden administration, saying the termination of a Trump-era immigration policy is facilitating the flow of fentanyl across the southern border.
Morrisey filed the suit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security an Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The suit is in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia.
The suit asks the court to force Homeland Security to reconsider its termination of the Remain in Mexico policy, alleging Mayorkas canceled the policy without due consideration for the impact on efforts to stop the smuggling of illegal drugs such as fentanyl.
Morrisey expressed his concerns about Mayorkas’ actions in a June 7 letter to him, but Mayorkas never replied, Morrisey said.
Morrisey explains the problem in the court filing. Homeland Security established the Migrant Protection Protocols (nicknamed Remain in Mexico) in December 2018 to deter individuals without legal authorization or valid asylum claims from seeking to enter the United States by crossing the Southwest border. Asylum applicants attempting to cross the order were returned to Mexico during expedited processing of their claims rather than held in detention or paroled into the United States.
The intent, he quotes from Homeland Security, was to “reduce illegal migration by removing one of the key incentives that encourages people from taking the dangerous journey to the United States in the first place.”
“Ending the Remain in Mexico policy will undoubtedly lead to an increase in illegal drug trafficking and thus senseless deaths from fentanyl,” Morrisey said in announcing the suit.
The suit explains that fentanyl is about 100 times more potent than morphine. A lethal dose can be as small as 2 milligrams, meaning 1 kilogram of fentanyl (2.2 pounds) contains up to 500,000 potentially lethal doses.
According to the DEA’s 2017 Drug Threat Assessment, 1 kilogram of pure fentanyl can result in revenues of $1.28 million to $1.92 million, as compared to only $80,000 in revenue for one kilogram of heroin. One kilogram of pure fentanyl can be diluted down into the equivalent of 16 to 24 kilograms of heroin.
And while fentanyl bricks had typically been smuggled across the border in vehicles, a new threat comes in the form of pure fentanyl backpacked across the border. A single backpack can contain 10 kilograms or more of pure fentanyl, with a street value of nearly $20 million. With industrial-scale illegal fentanyl production now occurring in Mexico, these backpack loads can cost less $50,000 for drug cartels to produce.
TWEET David Beard @dbeardtdp EMAIL dbeard@dominionpost.com
