[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 45 (Thursday, March 9, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S732-S733]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                Fentanyl

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the overdose epidemic is ravaging 
communities all across this country and leaving a trail of death and 
destruction. The latest data shows we lost nearly 107,000 Americans 
last year alone. The majority of those deaths were attributed to 
fentanyl, a synthetic opioid made from precursors shipped from China, 
mainly, to Mexico, where they are then manufactured. Fentanyl alone is 
killing 70,000 Americans a year.
  On average, we are talking about more than 190 people dying each day 
due to fentanyl. That is more people than a commercial 737 airliner can 
hold. So imagine the public outrage if, day after day, commercial 
airliners fell out of the sky, killing everyone aboard. Well, you can 
imagine what the reaction would be. Social media would erupt. People 
would protest. Our constituents wouldn't just ask us to intervene; they 
would demand it.
  Unfortunately--and this is a mystery to me--the fentanyl epidemic and 
the drug overdose deaths we have seen in the last year don't get the 
same sort of response. It is as though our threshold for outrage now is 
so high that even the death of 107,000 Americans would not achieve that 
threshold.
  We know this epidemic does not discriminate. It kills people of all 
ages and backgrounds from major cities and small towns all across 
America. But one of the most alarming trends we see is the appalling 
trend of fentanyl-related deaths among teenagers. These teens 
frequently think they are buying something else, such as Percocet or 
OxyContin or Xanax, and unknowingly they end up with a counterfeit pill 
contaminated with a deadly dose of fentanyl.
  This is the case for students in Hays County, which is just southwest 
of Austin, where I live. Since last summer, the Hays Consolidated 
Independent School District has lost five students to fentanyl 
poisoning.
  In October, I had the chance to meet with the parents of one of those 
students, Shannon McConville, who lost her 17-year-old son Kevin to 
fentanyl poisoning. She told me that Kevin was full of promise, a 
talented person, an artist. After graduating, he wanted to join the 
Navy and become an underwater welder. But, sadly, Kevin was never able 
to realize his dream. He died just a few weeks before the beginning of 
his senior year.
  A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to Hays County to speak with more 
families who have lost their children to fentanyl poisoning, as well as 
law enforcement personnel, school officials, and medical professionals, 
trying to figure out what do we need to do.
  I saw Shannon and her husband Darren, as well as the parents of 
another young victim, 15-year-old Noah Rodriguez. Noah's parents, 
Brandon and Janel, told me that Noah was a genuine, kind young man and 
something of a jokester. He was an athlete, a devoted friend, and a big 
brother to his three siblings, the youngest of whom was only 2 weeks 
old when Noah died.

  Despite their profound loss, these parents and countless others are 
committed to raising awareness. You can imagine the courage it takes to 
overcome your grief and pain to try to share your story with others so 
that others might live.
  I had the opportunity to learn about the Fighting Fentanyl public 
awareness campaign in Hays County, as well as the work being done by 
school leaders and law enforcement. We all acknowledged that there is 
no single action that will end this epidemic. We can't just focus on 
prevention or treatment or drug diversion; a successful strategy will 
involve all three of those. We need buy-in from leaders at every level 
of government, as well as healthcare providers, schools, nonprofits, 
law enforcement, and, of course, the general public, just like the 
approach we are seeing in Hays County. This has to be an all-in effort.

[[Page S733]]

  But during our discussion, there was broad agreement that the 
starting point should be the source of these drugs, which is our 
southern border. All four parents stressed the importance of securing 
the border and preventing fentanyl from ever reaching our communities.
  Shannon McConville said that when it comes to the border, the Biden 
administration is failing. I agree.
  Last week, five of my Republican colleagues joined me for a series of 
tours and meetings in the Rio Grande Valley, where they got to see the 
administration's security failures firsthand. By my calculation, that 
is about the 10th delegation that either I or Senator Cruz or both of 
us have hosted of colleagues coming to the border in Texas.
  Border Patrol agents told us last weekend about the tactics cartels 
use to traffic fentanyl and other dangerous drugs into the country. 
First and foremost, they distract and overwhelm agents by coordinating 
a surge of migrants, which provides a golden opportunity to sneak 
across the border undetected--overwhelm the Border Patrol with a swarm 
of migrants and distract them while the drugs make their way north.
  This isn't news, of course, to the Biden administration. It is a 
well-known maneuver used by the cartels, acknowledged by the Attorney 
General of the United States last week when he came before the Senate 
Judiciary Committee. But for some reason, the administration seems 
determined to just simply look the other way.
  President Biden's apathetic approach to the southern border must 
change in order for us to have a chance at addressing this public 
health crisis. Just think about a burst pipe in your home. If water is 
pouring from the ceiling, what do you do first? Well, you aren't going 
to go grab buckets and towels to start cleaning the water while it is 
still raining down; you are going to turn the main water supply off and 
stop the leak at its source. That is what we need to do here: Cut off 
the supply. Until that happens, we are going to be fighting a losing 
battle, and more people will die.
  It is well known that the southern border is a major gateway for 
illegal drugs. In the last 12 months, Customs and Border Protection 
have seized 23,000 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border, enough to 
wipe out the entire U.S. population many times over.
  That is a daunting statistic, but we know this number isn't the full 
story. It only includes the drugs that our law enforcement officials 
were able to stop. We know from all the deaths and wide availability of 
fentanyl and other illegal drugs in America that much more than that 
makes its way into the interior of our country. So there is no exact 
way to know how much fentanyl has slipped through the cracks, but the 
fact that we are losing 70,000 Americans a year to fentanyl is proof 
that we aren't batting a perfect game--far from it.
  Let's not forget the fact that law enforcement at every level is also 
encountering and attempting to stop the fentanyl proliferation. Last 
month, the Collin County Sheriff's Office and North Texas Sheriff's 
Criminal Interdiction Unit arrested a Dallas man with about 6,000 
fentanyl pills in his vehicle during a traffic stop. Last year, the 
Drug Enforcement Administration seized more than 379 million lethal 
doses of fentanyl--enough to kill every American.
  Drug trafficking is obviously a lucrative business, and cartels take 
advantage of every security gap in order to make money. There is no 
question that the ongoing border crisis has provided the perfect 
opportunity for these cartels, who care nothing about people. All they 
care about is the money.
  If Border Patrol agents are changing diapers and passing out meals, 
as they have had to do to manage the volume of migrants coming across 
the border, they can't control the frontlines and stop cartels from 
trafficking these dangerous drugs into the interior.
  I want to be clear. I am not suggesting that every migrant who comes 
across is responsible for the drugs coming across the border--far from 
it. But the mass movement of people orchestrated by these transnational 
criminal organizations, even including people with legitimate asylum 
claims, opens the opportunity--gateways, if you will--for truly 
dangerous criminals and substances to come across the border. Unless 
something changes, it is going to get worse. In order to save lives, we 
have got to secure the border and stop fentanyl from reaching our 
communities. That should be the first step.

  As a matter of fact, the President, in his State of the Union last 
month, said that he wanted Members of Congress to pass his plan to 
provide the officers and equipment needed to secure the border. Now, 
that surprised me because I wasn't aware that the President had a plan, 
but there is no question that border security legislation is needed and 
those resources are necessary.
  We need to strengthen this combination of technology, boots on the 
ground, and infrastructure that Border Patrol tells me is the key to 
successfully securing the border, and that is the only way to stop 
dangerous drugs and criminals who mingle in with economic migrants and 
other asylum seekers to make their way across the border into the 
interior of the United States.
  There is no doubt we also need to reform the asylum process to ensure 
that personnel, technology, and infrastructure can properly focus on 
interdicting narcotics and other contraband.
  Anyone who questions the need for these measures should talk with the 
parents who have had to bury their children; talk with the brothers and 
sisters who have lost a sibling; talk with the teenagers who are 
grieving at the unexpected losses of healthy and vibrant friends. We 
owe it to them and to the countless people who are terrified by this 
looming threat to stop these drugs at the source.
  Obviously, what we are doing now is not sufficient. It is not 
working. I heard, again, Attorney General Garland say: Well, we are 
doing everything we can. And that is not true. He may think he is doing 
everything he can, but, obviously, it isn't working.
  We can't accept failure. We have got to come up with a formula to 
address this as we did yesterday during an open hearing in the 
Intelligence Committee where I asked the leaders of our national 
security Agencies: What else can you offer? what other resources? What 
other authorities do you need in order to stop this dying of people who 
are taking fentanyl and other illegal drugs coming across the border?
  But it starts with securing the border, and we will be fighting a 
continuing losing battle until that is done.
  I yield the floor.


                Nomination of James Edward Simmons, Jr.

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm 
Judge James Simmons, Jr., who has been nominated to the U.S. District 
Court for the Southern District of California.
  Born in Inglewood, CA, Judge Simmons received his B.A. from the 
University of California at Berkeley in 2001 and went on to earn his 
J.D. at Golden Gate University School of Law in 2004. Judge Simmons 
began his legal career as a deputy city attorney for the city of San 
Diego in 2005, a role in which he tried 19 jury trials on behalf of the 
city in 1 year. In 2006, he became a trial attorney at the San Diego 
District Attorney's Office. As an attorney in the gang prosecution 
unit, Judge Simmons tried 30 jury trials over 11 years. Since 2017, 
Judge Simmons has served as a Superior Court judge for the San Diego 
Superior Court. Having presided over thousands of matters and 12 bench 
trials, Judge Simmons has notably never been reversed by a reviewing 
court.
  The American Bar Association has unanimously rated Judge Simmons 
``well qualified'' to serve on the Southern District of California, and 
Senators Feinstein and Padilla strongly support his nomination as well.
  I will be supporting this highly qualified nominee, and I urge all of 
my colleagues to do the same.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.