Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Ted Budd (R-N.C.) delivered a speech on the Senate floor this afternoon, urging Canada to take a leading role in efforts to dismantle criminal cartel networks from exploiting the U.S.-Canada border as a gateway for trafficking illicit fentanyl into the United States.
Watch the full speech here.
Click here to download complete video remarks.
Key Excerpts from Sen. Budd’s Speech:
Last year alone, as my colleagues have shared with you, more than 70,000 Americans died from a fentanyl overdose, and unsurprisingly, the Biden administration failed to act. Instead, President Biden willingly chose to let the situation get worse.
For years, our southern border has been a major entry point for illegal drugs to pour into our country. But, under President Trump’s leadership, illegal crossings at the southern border have now dropped 94 percent.
That’s real progress.
Now, however, we are seeing a dangerous shift. Drug cartels have found a new route and a new loophole to continue trafficking drugs into our communities—and it’s through the northern border with Canada.
Just last year, Customs and Border Patrol seized enough fentanyl at the northern border to kill 9.5 million Americans.
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Mr. President, when I talk to the sheriffs in all 100 counties across North Carolina, I repeatedly hear the same message: every county in North Carolina is a border county.
The U.S.-Canada border is the world’s longest international border—at more than 5,500 miles long. But it remains extraordinarily vulnerable, as criminal cartel networks continue to take advantage of the gaps in our porous northern border.
I think it’s important to know that 87 percent of all terror watchlist suspects that were encountered at land border ports, last year, they came across our northern border.
We have invested heavily in our southern border infrastructure—rightfully so—and we should continue to do so. But the northern border has been overlooked and under-resourced for way too long. Our law enforcement officers are doing everything they can, but without enough resources, they are being set up to fail. And that’s not fair to them.
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As our ally, we need Canada to step up before more lives are lost, because the truth is that behind every statistic is a grieving family. The American people deserve more than just empty words—they deserve real action.
The fentanyl crisis will only continue to strangle our country until we deal with the threat at our northern border like the emergency that it truly is.
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Read the complete transcript here.
Background:
During his floor speech, Senator Budd quoted a recent 60 Minutes interview where a self-described member of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, one of Mexico’s largest and most well-known operations, openly claimed that: “Canada’s border is much larger than Mexico’s. There are more entry points through Canada than through Mexico, a lot more entry points. So that won’t stop us.”
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