FBI director Chris Wray says US needs ‘much more’ help from Mexico to combat dangerous drugs, deadly gangs
FBI director Christopher Wray bemoaned the “uneven” support Mexico has given US law enforcement to help prevent dangerous cartels and deadly drugs from entering the country.
Wray testified on Thursday before a House Appropriations subcommittee where he pleaded for more cooperation on various issues, saying the US needs “much, much more” help from south of the border.
“I would say it’s very uneven. We’ve had some instances where we’ve had a key arrest and extradition … we’re starting to work with vetted teams down there,” Wray said. “But we need much, much more than we’re getting from the Mexican government.”
Wray contended that the bureau needs Mexico to start cracking down against the cartels, shuttering the labs where drugs are produced, and rooting out the precursor chemicals used for creating fentanyl.
Wray claimed that the bureau seized enough fentanyl material to “kill 207 million American people” during the “last two years in a row.”
He also stressed that China needs to do more to help block the dissemination of precursor chemicals for fentanyl as well.
The FBI chief pleaded for additional information sharing from those two governments at a “scaled, consistent, sustained level” to fuel law enforcement efforts.
Fentanyl has quickly emerged as a prominent hot-button issue ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election after overdose deaths from the drug have ravaged families and neighborhoods across the country.
It is a synthetic opioid estimated to be as much as 50 times more potent than heroin. Sometimes it is laced in lower level drugs, unbeknownst to the user.
A record-setting more than 76,000 Americans died after ingesting synthetic opioids in 2022, the most recent full year for which data are available, according to CDC estimates.
Complete monthly death tolls from 2023 and 2024 are not yet available, but months in mid-2023 were projected by the federal health agency to set fresh all-time records.
More than 72,000 Americans died from fentanyl and related compounds in 2021 during Biden’s first year in office — up dramatically from roughly 58,000 in 2020, 37,000 in 2019 and 32,000 in 2018, according to CDC data.
The bureau chief explained that once fentanyl material enters the US, it is often disseminated by “neighborhood gangs” including “not just in the border states but all over.”
But Wray wasn’t all doom and gloom.
When asked by Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) about cooperation between domestic US law enforcement agencies especially on efforts to combat drug trafficking, Wray grew more optimistic.
“I think one of the really bright spots that I see, especially when I compare it to earlier in my career, is how close the partnerships are across all levels of law enforcement,” he said.
“Partnerships are in many ways stronger than ever, and that’s one of the things that’s keeping us from becoming an even worse problem.”
Wray’s appearance before the appropriations subcommittee came as he made his pitch to the appropriations subcommittee for his fiscal year 2025 budget request.
The FBI is seeking $11.3 billion for the next fiscal year for “national security, intelligence, criminal law enforcement, and criminal justice services missions,” according to Wray.
During his testimony, Wray also begged lawmakers to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) ahead of its expiration on April 19.
A House-GOP effort to pass a rule renewing the controversial warrantless surveillance authority failed on Wednesday, prompting leadership to reassess its plan.
Wray recalled how last year, the bureau investigated an individual, whom he described as a “foreign terrorist overseas” who had contact with someone in the US and ran an inquiry under that authority.
“That’s when we discovered whoa, wait a minute, we got a live one here. This is serious,” he recounted. “We were able to arrest the person who had by that time weapons bomb-making equipment, target circled, and everything else.”
“If we had to get a warrant for that initial query, there’s not a judge on the planet that would have given us a warrant based on what we knew at the time.”
Steven Nelson contributed to this report.
