Following former President Donald Trump’s lead, some Ohio Republicans say illegal migrants are bringing with them the deadly scourge of fentanyl.
Several experts say such statements are highly misleading. And anti-hate groups say such statements put another target on the backs of a population already victimized by racist violence.
Trump has equated illegal immigrants with crime since he announced his candidacy in 2015, when he said that people crossing the border from Mexico “arebringing crime. They’re rapists. I assume some are good people.
Trump and his allies continually incite anger at particular people, terrible crimes committed by an undocumented person. However, research shows that the group commits crime on much lower rates than native native.
“Isolated incidents are magnified,” said Michael Debruhl, former head of the Border Patrol, during a recent press conference organized by the National Immigration Forum. “These things happen over and over again, so I don’t blame people for thinking there’s a wave of immigrant crime. Unfortunately, there are crimes committed by immigrants. But when you look at the facts about migration and crime, this (concept of) a migrant crime wave just doesn’t make sense.”
Regardless of the facts, Trump continues his attacks on migrants, which many observers believe are part of a larger authoritarian which increasingly dominates his rhetoric.
In 2022 he called dissolve the Constitutionand in December he said that he would be a dictator first day in office if re-elected. Last November, Trump appeared to echo Adolf Hitler’s words when, in a speech, he called his political opponents “vermin“
Many people also heard such echoes last December, when, in a speech in Iowa, Trump told his supporters that immigrants crossing the southern border were “blood poisoning” United States. Trump said he didn’t know that his rhetoric on immigration resembles Hitler’s.
Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, who is said to be in upper layer Trump’s vice presidential candidates also denied links to Hitler. Vance said the former president – and the current one convicted criminals — he wasn’t imitating Germany’s genocidal maniac, he was referring to the crisis that did it killed hundreds of thousands Americans.
“First of all, he didn’t say that immigrants are poisoning the blood of this country,” Vance told a news organization in Washington Hill after Trump’s comments. “He said that illegal immigrants are poisoning the blood of this country, which is an objective and obvious truth to anyone who looks at the fentanyl overdose statistics.”
The problem is that several experts say this is misleading.
“Many people believe that all drugs are brought in by migrants, but the truth is that 92% to 94% of all drugs coming into the country come through ports of entry,” Debruhl, a former enforcement officer, said.
This makes sense when you consider that drug smugglers are 97% less likely to be apprehended at a port of entry than for illegal migrants flowing between them, Cato Institute analyst David J. Bier reported in 2022.
US Customs and Border Protection reports that 98% of private vehicles and 83% of commercial vehicles are currently damaged passing through unscanned input ports. It hopes to reduce these numbers to 60% and 30% respectively after installing advanced scanning equipment by 2026.
In addition, the extensive majority of those convicted of fentanyl trafficking are American citizens – 86.3% in 2021, Bier said.
Additionally, Bier said at a May press conference organized by the Immigration Forum that in all encounters with migrants in 2023, Border Patrol agents detected fentanyl in only 0.009% of cases.
“There is no point in putting a backpack (with fentanyl) on a group of people and sending them across the border,” Bier said.
However, this does not mean that no drugs are transported between ports of entry or that they are not on the backs of undocumented people. In 2021, the Drug Enforcement Agency reported that drugs mostly move through ports by vehicles, but in 2024 some arrive by land or through tunnels.
John Modlin, lead patrol agent in the Tucson sector in early 2023, told the House Oversight Committee that agents in his sector in 2022 seized 364 pounds of fentanyl that was backpacked across the border.
Vance passed the test this year when he had the opportunity to vote on two pieces of legislation that would facilitate stop fentanyl from flowing across the southern border
One of them was the FEND off Fentanyl Act, introduced by Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and co-sponsored by Vance. Vance said yes couldn’t handle the last pass because it became part of a package that included financing for Ukraine.
Next was the bipartisan border security bill, which included funding for an additional customs officer and novel technology. When was it supposed to end? Trump screwed it up telling Republicans not to give President Joe Biden a political victory by voting for him.
The consensus among experts is that the extensive majority of illicit fentanyl is transported in vehicles passing through ports of entry, and most of it is transported by U.S. citizens. But some on the right are trying to blame the unfolding opioid crisis on migrants and bash Biden.
“1.2 million undocumented illegal immigrants have passed through CBP under the Biden administration,” Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced he said on X last year. “Fentanyl overdose deaths continue to rise, including in Ohio communities. We cannot expect immigration reform to reduce fentanyl overdoses until we secure our southern border.”
Falsely blaming migrants for Ohio’s opioid epidemic could expose them and others like them to violence, such as: Massacre 2019 at the El Paso Walmart where 23 people died.
The Dangerous speech project examines how rhetoric can incite violence between groups of people. He says fearful speech is particularly risky. It’s uncomplicated to see how blaming the presence of risky drugs on migrants can create fear.
“A hallmark of dangerous speech is that it often incites fear while at the same time expressing or promoting hatred,” the group says on its website. “For example, you may say that another group is planning to attack your own group without expressing hatred, but such a message can easily convince people to tolerate or use violence, supposedly to counter the attack. Violence would seem defensive and therefore justified.”
