Deb Fischer: “I would thank my colleague, the senior Senator from Texas, for his comments and his perspective and his insight, as a…”

“I would thank my colleague, the senior Senator from Texas, for his comments and his perspective and his insight, as a Senator serving from a border State, on what they are facing every single day. I would say to my colleague that Nebraska has become a border State. I know Colorado has become a border State. Every State in this country now is feeling the effects of the chaos that we see at our southern border, so my thanks to the senior Senator from Texas for offering his perspective on that. I would say that on January 13 in Nebraska, we had two Nebraska State Patrol officers who pulled over two separate vehicles that were hours away from each other. One car contained 50,000 suspected fentanyl pills. The other contained a suspected fentanyl-cocaine mixture. Both cars were driven up from the border. These are only the latest instances of synthetic opioid trafficking in my State of Nebraska. In 2022, the Nebraska State Patrol confiscated 66 pounds of fentanyl, and that is up from 25 pounds the year before and 10 pounds in 2020. In Nebraska and throughout this Nation, the numbers of drug seizures are staggering. At the southwest border, there was a 55-percent increase in fentanyl seizures from just November to December. Heroin seizures increased by 52 percent the month before. Methamphetamine seizures increased as well. We know what is driving these drug trafficking numbers: We have a crisis at our southern border.…”