"Last year, we seized about 700 pounds of fentanyl," Modlin stated. "That was encountered – 52% of that, so the majority of that – was encountered in the field. So that is predominantly being backpacked across the border."
And that seizure is from only a vanishing minority of migrants who were searched. Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants are just sneak in without any checking. The formal ports of entry undergo far more validation and hence more stuff is found.
During the months where there are an average of 10k illegal crossings per day, some would argue that the border is open enough to be porous to about a towns worth of humans per day.
No they don’t. There’s actually been a huge problem in that many people come to the border because they’ve been told it is open, when in fact, it is not. The myth that it is open is amplified by the American right constantly claiming it is open on the news.
> tens of thousands of illegal immigrants are just sneak in without any checking
One TEU can weigh up to 67,500 lbs [1]. Humans can’t carry more than 20 to 30% of their body weight for meaningful distances. To rival the capacity of a single container, assuming only really fit men, you’d need 1,350 backpackers (assuming 200 lb men carrying 50 lbs each, which is ridiculous).
If every one of the nation’s 2mm illegal crossers were a fit man carrying their maximum load on a backpack, it would total to the tonnage of 1,500 containers. The Port of LA processed over 500x that in June [2]. The throughput at a signal American port is 3+ orders of magnitude more than could possibly be carried by every illegal border crosser by backpack.
It’s wild for anyone with a basic sense of numeracy to believe that humans carrying backpacks are bringing a material amount of anything into this country, let alone a product for mass consumption.
"Last year, we seized about 700 pounds of fentanyl," Modlin stated. "That was encountered – 52% of that, so the majority of that – was encountered in the field. So that is predominantly being backpacked across the border."
And that seizure is from only a vanishing minority of migrants who were searched. Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants are just sneak in without any checking. The formal ports of entry undergo far more validation and hence more stuff is found.