The Mexican president pledged to increase the country’s efforts to curb the trafficking of fentanyl across the border, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) recently told reporters.
Cornyn met with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and other local officials as part of a bipartisan congressional delegation to Mexico on March 20.
Alongside Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), Chris Coons (D-DE), Jerry Moran (R-KS), and others, several Texas lawmakers were in attendance, including Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo), Veronica Escobar (D-El Paso), and Tony Gonzales (R-San Antonio), as The Dallas Express previously reported.
The primary aim of the delegation was to share their concerns about Mexico’s handling of issues related to drugs, cartel violence, and unlawful migration.
Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection indicate that 656,000 pounds of drugs were seized at the southern border in 2022, and 208,000 pounds have been logged so far this year.
Smuggled drugs have fed a worsening drug epidemic in the U.S., with over 100,000 Americans dying from drug overdoses in the year ending in October 2022, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fentanyl, a man-made opioid that can be 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, has been a significant contributor to the recent surge in drug overdose deaths in the country.
The Food and Drug Administration even fast-tracked its approval of an over-the-counter Narcan nasal spray to reverse the effects of this opioid on overdose victims, as The Dallas Express reported Wednesday.
In Dallas, the issue has raised enough alarm for local authorities to endorse a Texas House of Representatives bill seeking to expand and allow overdose mapping, per The Dallas Express.
“The United States and Mexico share a common border, which means we should have a shared interest in working together to address the security challenges that put American and Mexican lives at risk,” Cornyn said, per a news release from his office.
As he told CBS News Texas on March 28, he hopes the meeting in Mexico will not only slow the stream of illegal drugs into the U.S. but also clear the way to finding a bipartisan agreement to tackle unlawful migration at the border.
“If there is a path, it is going to have to start with the House, they’re going to have to pass a border security bill,” Cornyn told CBS News Texas.
In 2022, CBP reported encountering 2,378,944 people along the southern border. There have been 1,029,953 people encountered so far this year.
Although both Republicans and Democrats have been at odds on how to handle the border crisis, the migrant surges seen in the past year have led everyone to agree that a serious problem exists, as The Dallas Express reported.
Cornyn told CBS News Texas said he hopes the House Republican majority will act quickly to pass measures to better secure the border but estimated it could take a couple of more months for them to do so.