On the recordJanuary 15, 2019
I thank my good friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, for his leadership on this. I am honored to be a part of this group dealing with a problem that we all know is a reality and yet so few seem to be willing to do anything about. We have thousands of new aliens entering our country every day, and this surge of illegal immigrants flooding across our porous borders puts our Nation at risk in more ways than one. In 2017 alone, more than 900 Americans died every week from the opioid-related crisis and overdoses. Every American, everyone in this chamber knows personally someone who has been affected by this, be it a family member, a friend, a coworker, a neighbor, where the opioid crisis has penetrated into these lives. And its advancement continues to march down the streets of our Nation. The story of the opioid epidemic certainly begins many times with prescription pain medications, pharmaceutical companies, pill mills, overprescribing, many of these kinds of ways, but today we see the opioid crisis being driven by the widespread availability of cheap, powerful drugs like heroin, often laced with synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Make no mistake about it: this is a human tragedy. It is a family tragedy. It is a national tragedy. It is a national crisis that we are facing right now, largely because of loopholes that we have in our immigration laws, but also unquestionably because of the physical barriers that don't exist.…
