DEA Chief Won’t Say If Mexico Cooperates Enough in Fight Against Drug Cartels

Anne Milgram, administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, accompanied by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, answers questions about the extradition and unsealing of an indictment charging former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, at the Department of Justice in Washington, on April 21, 2022. Win McNamee/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Anne Milgram repeatedly declined to answer a host of pointed questions from Republican members of a House Appropriations Committee panel during an April 27 budget hearing, including whether she thinks Mexico is cooperating enough with the United States in fighting the drug cartels that are flooding the country with fentanyl.

Asked twice by Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, about Mexico’s cooperation, Milgram simply described two of the major Mexican drug cartels—the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation criminal organizations—as “the greatest drug threat this country has ever faced.”

She estimated that more than 107,000 Americans died last year from violence and drug overdoses.

Asked the same question later in the hearing by Rep. Jake Ellzey (R-Texas), Milgram responded, “We all need to do more, and Mexico needs to do more.”

Ellzey also asked the DEA chief if there are corrupt elements in the Mexican government that the agency won’t work with.

“We follow the evidence wherever it goes,” Milgram replied.

Similarly, Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) asked Milgram if she thinks it is practical for DEA agents chasing drug couriers in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas to drive electric vehicles (EVs), as recently directed by President Joe Biden. Carter pointed out that there are few EV charging stations in that region and that, while fast, such vehicles have a limited range.

Teslas for DEA Agents

Milgram only said the DEA is required to do as directed by Biden, and she assured the Texas lawmaker that she “will do everything I can and the men and woman of DEA will do everything they can to do the work that needs to be done.”

Milgram remained oblique when asked by Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) about an investigation being conducted by Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz into allegations that millions of dollars in DEA sole-source contracts are being awarded to political cronies of Milgram. Prior to being appointed to the federal anti-drug agency, she was New Jersey’s attorney general.

“American families should feel safe and be able to trust that federal agencies such as the DEA that are tasked with preventing these deadly drugs from coming into this country are operating efficiently and effectively,” Clyde said.

But media reports “show an abuse of contact authority leaving Americans wondering if they can really trust the Biden administration’s DEA to do the best job in protecting their families from illegal and lethal drugs such as fentanyl,” he continued.

Clyde then asked Milgram if the DEA has “awarded any no-bid contracts” during her tenure.

“As I have said, I think it’s an important issue, and the inspector general is conducting an administrative review of some DEA contracts,” she said. “I welcome that and I am not going to step in front of him out of respect for his work.”

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) (L) talks to Rep.-elect Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) in the House chamber during the third day of elections for House Speaker at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 5, 2023. Win McNamee/Getty Images

Milgram promised to “get back to” Clyde on how many no-bid contracts have been awarded by the DEA and the total dollar value.

Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) asked Milgram how she “would grade” the DEA on fulfilling its statutory duty on her watch of enforcing controlled substance laws and regulations and prosecuting individuals and organizations that manufacture illegal drugs.

“Congressman, I think the men and women of the DEA are doing an incredible job to meet this moment and to save lives,” Milgram answered. “I also believe we are doing what we need to do, which is to transform our vision, the way we work, and how we execute it in order to stop Americans from dying, and I believe we’re doing that.”

At that point, things got testy.

“I don’t think you are,” Garcia shot back. “I'll be honest; I respect and appreciate the service of the DEA agents. But when you have 100,000 Americans dying of these poisonings in a given year, and it is getting worse over time, to make the assertion as the administrator of the DEA that you are doing this job well or that you are getting the job done is, frankly, flagrant and offensive.”

Garcia followed up by asking Milgram why she declined when asked by Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) to label China “a major illicit drug trafficker-producing country.”

Milgram said neither she nor anyone else in the United States “thinks it’s acceptable” that so many Americans are dying of fentanyl poisoning. She emphasized that she believes “the men and women of DEA are transforming the way we work to attack the cartels at their core.”

“We’ve only shown the beginning of the results. In the coming months, you will begin to see more of those results,” she said.

Tempers Flare on ‘Open Border’ Claim

Tempers flared later when Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the subcommittee, said, “We’ve heard talk about our so-called open border,” and offered for the record a Sept. 22, 2022, NBC opinion column titled “The GOP’s Myth of an Open Border.” The column was authored by Debu Gandhi, senior director of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal 501(C)(4) advocacy group.

The column claimed: “Contrary to the ‘open border’ myth, U.S. borders are guarded by a vast and well-funded national security agency that has grown far larger and more powerful in recent years. Since 2001, U.S. Border Patrol has nearly doubled in capacity, from fewer than 10,000 agents to now more than 19,500. The Biden administration has requested $97.3 billion in funding for the Department of Homeland Security for fiscal year 2023, including billions of dollars for border security and interior immigration enforcement.”

Carter responded to Cartwright: “It doesn’t take anyone with a third-grade education to see that when 40,000 people cross the border at one time and claim asylum, we have a problem on the Texas border. And 40,000 people cross every day ... so I very much take offense at that statement.”

The Epoch Times has asked Carter’s staff for the source of his figure.

Data published by the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) show huge increases in the number of illegal border-crossings along the U.S. border with Mexico in recent years. From October 2022 to March of this year, the CBP data show 1,055,320 total known illegal border-crossings, with 265,037 recorded for El Paso, Texas, 217,849 for Del Rio, Texas, and 132,168 for the Rio Grande Valley.

That equals an average of 5,798 illegal border-crossings for each of the 182 days during the period covered. The CBP data, however, don’t include the “got-aways,” individuals who successfully cross the border and elude capture by U.S. and state law enforcement officials. There were more than 500,000 got-aways last year, according to the House Committee on Homeland Security.

“The drug cartels responsible for bringing fentanyl into this country are ruthless and extremely violent criminal enterprises,” Milgram said during her opening statement. “They rely on a global supply chain to manufacture and distribute fentanyl. And they rely on a global illicit financial network to pocket billions of dollars.”

Fed Alive to Tigers

The Chapitos Network of the cartels “kill, kidnap, and torture anyone who gets in the way,” Milgram said.

“In Mexico, they have fed their enemies alive to tigers, electrocuted them, waterboarded them, and shot them at close range with a .50 caliber machine gun,” she said.

She described the DEA response as implementing “a transformation of its own to meet this moment.”

“DEA has acted with urgency to set a new vision, target the global criminal networks most responsible for the influx of fentanyl into the United States, raise public awareness about how just one pill can kill, and hire and promote hundreds of people across the agency and across the nation,” she said.

“We have transformed our vision by focusing on fentanyl—the drug killing the most Americans—and the criminal organizations responsible for flooding fentanyl into our communities, the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation cartel. We have transformed our plan by building an entirely new strategic layer—our counter-threat teams for the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco cartel—that map the cartels, analyze their networks, and develop targeting information on the members of those networks wherever they operate around the globe.”