The company will develop its presence in Mexico, the place the drug cartels who dominate the fentanyl commerce function, and deploy extra investigators to the U.S.-Mexico border, the place the quantity of fentanyl tablets and powder flowing into the United States has boomed.

More than 100,000 Americans are dying of unlawful drug overdoses per 12 months, an all-time excessive, placing federal legislation enforcement businesses underneath intense public stress to enhance seizures and arrests.

“This is a huge priority for us,” Katrina W. Berger, director of HSI, a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, stated in an interview. “The overdose numbers are just astronomical.”

Fentanyl accounts for almost all of U.S. overdose deaths. The drug’s compact dimension makes it simple to smuggle and particularly onerous for authorities to stop.

Trafficking organizations in Mexico illegally manufacture fentanyl in clandestine labs, urgent it into tablets that resemble prescription painkillers. Smugglers usually rent U.S. residents and green-card holders to transfer bundles of tablets or powder throughout the border hidden in automobiles or their physique cavities.

The newest Customs and Border Protection statistics present U.S. authorities are on tempo to seize greater than 25,000 kilos of fentanyl through the fiscal 12 months ending Sept. 30, a fivefold enhance since 2020. The drug’s low cost value is particularly worrisome to U.S. authorities: A single blue pill packing a probably deadly dose prices $2 or $3.

Homeland Security officers say HSI is the federal authorities’s finest device for combating the drug, as a result of the company has the power to conduct investigations alongside the whole illicit provide chain, from ports to labs to the U.S. border and within the vacation spot cities the place fentanyl is shipped.

The technique report launched Tuesday makes no particular point out of the Drug Enforcement Administration, however Berger stated the 2 businesses work carefully and have a system to deconflict circumstances in order that they don’t find yourself producing redundant investigations.

“We have some very unique authorities that really enable us to attack fentanyl and illicit opioids — from the international countries where the precursor chemicals come, to the transit countries where the pills are often manufactured, to the border, where they’re coming in, and then into our communities where we work with our partners,” she stated.

HSI officers stated the company will develop its investigative work alongside the U.S.-Mexico border in anticipation of a rise in fentanyl seizures as CBP officers deploy scanning machines that may ramp up car inspections.

The majority of fentanyl seizures happen at border crossings in Arizona and the San Diego space, alongside smuggling corridors dominated by Mexico’s highly effective Sinaloa cartel.

HSI officers notched a win final week when Mexico extradited Ovidio Guzman, the 33-year-old son of Sinaloa kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who’s serving a life sentence at a maximum-security federal jail in Colorado. U.S. authorities allege that after the elder Guzman’s arrest in 2016 and extradition in 2017, the youthful Guzman and his brothers took over a part of their father’s cartel trafficking operation, flooding U.S. communities with narcotics.

Some of the brand new enforcement measures the company outlined are extra mundane efforts, corresponding to a plan to arrange a cross-border monetary crimes middle to work with banks, international authorities businesses and the digital corporations buying and selling cryptocurrencies that can be utilized to launder drug cash.

HSI officers stated they’ll set up a “Chemical Industry Outreach Project” to assist personal corporations determine questionable shipments, and the company will enhance ties with the World Customs Organization to higher goal precursor chemicals destined for trafficking organizations.