Fentanyl Scanners That Were Sitting Due to Lack of Federal Funds Can Now Be Installed at the Border to Capture Smugglers

Fifty-six scanning systems that can detect fentanyl in personal vehicles across the southern U.S. borders will now be installed due to new $200 million in funding that was approved by Congress after NBC News reported that the scanners were sitting unused. in warehouses.

Ninety-five percent of fentanyl seizures by U.S. authorities are discovered in personal vehicles driven across the border by U.S. citizens, according to Department of Homeland Security officials, and the scanners are the strongest tool the Biden administration has. to detect fentanyl in vehicles.

Following the NBC News report, two senators, three members of the Chamber it’s two state attorneys general called for additional funding to install scanners previously requested by DHS. Funding to finally install the machines came through the House Homeland Security appropriations bill, which Congress approved at the end of March.

The 56 that will be installed due to the new funding will be operational by 2026, according to a senior Customs and Border Protection official. Thirty-one scanning systems are already installed and 27 are under construction. All scanners were appropriated in 2021.

DHS says that once the scanners are installed, 40% of all personal vehicles crossing the border will be scanned. Now, less than 5% of personal vehicles are x-rayed, according to DHS officials.

At ports of entry without scanners, customs officials have to rely on their own intuition to detect anything amiss and hold vehicles for further inspection.

Since 2021, the US government has struggled to install fentanyl scanners at ports of entry. Critics have applauded the progress but say it is still just a drop in the ocean.

Bobby Watt was with CBP for more than 30 years and oversaw non-intrusive inspection screening at ports of entry before leaving CBP in 2019; he blames bureaucracy for the delays. He says the goal should be to digitize 100% of personal vehicles.

“It would be foolish not to,” said Watt, now a consultant for scanning contractor Viken Detection. “Because if you were a drug trafficker, would you go to a port that had X-rays? Or would you go to the one next to it that didn’t have an X-ray?

DHS has pointed to construction challenges with installation, such as a lack of space at ports of entry to install the systems, and says it does not have the Congressional funding needed to digitize 100% of vehicles. The senior CBP official said 40% of the vehicles that will be scanned will not be chosen at random; rather, they will be vehicles determined to pose the greatest risk.

New funding from Congress to reach 40% of vehicles was welcomed by some parents who have lost children to fentanyl, like Cindy DeMaio, who lost her daughter in Ohio to fentanyl poisoning in 2016.

DeMaio works with parents across the country to educate others about fentanyl, including placing billboards along the southern border where fentanyl is transported. “Anything we can do to increase the capture of these people and decrease the negative impacts on our country is extremely powerful,” she said.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, criticized the slow pace of efforts to install the scanners. In the fall, it called on the Government Accountability Office to examine how DHS spent more than a billion dollars on X-ray equipment. The investigation is ongoing, a GAO spokesperson said, and a report will be completed this year.

Cornyn and Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., want all new scanners to be tested to ensure that any technology purchased in the future is the most effective. They introduced a bipartisan bill this year to evaluate five types of scanners to ensure they detect the greatest amount of fentanyl.

“Last year, Customs and Border Protection seized enough fentanyl at the southern border to kill every American 16 times over, and we have no way of knowing how many more escaped law enforcement,” Cornyn said. “This legislation would help address glaring problems in the fentanyl detection system by requiring CBP to test new pieces of detection technology at land ports of entry so that we can prevent this deadly drug from claiming more lives.”