Biden Instructs Federal Agencies to Boost Counter-Drug-Trafficking Efforts

President Joe Biden delivers remarks about immigration and border security at the Brownsville Station in Olmito, Texas, on Feb. 29, 2024. Cheney Orr/Getty Images

President Joe Biden finalized a new national security memo on July 31 that instructs federal departments and agencies to boost their efforts to disrupt the flow of illicit narcotics into the United States.

The president said the memo will also order federal agencies to boost their intelligence collection and information sharing to more effectively uncover drug-trafficking efforts.

“It will enable our government to disrupt drug cartels—and their suppliers and financiers—more quickly and effectively,” Biden said in a July 31 statement.

A senior administration official previewed the memo in an officially organized call with reporters on July 30. The official said the new memo will push federal departments and agencies to adjust to the evolving tactics of drug-smuggling organizations.

“As the drug traffickers adapt and as a supply chain evolves, there’s a need to do even more to make sure that we have the best and most up-to-date common operating picture for all agencies and departments to work off of,” the senior administration official said, adding that the president intends to pair his new national security memo with a renewed call for lawmakers to advance existing bipartisan legislative proposals to combat the illicit narcotics trade.

Heroin and fentanyl pressed into pill form. Courtesy of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration

One such legislative proposal the Biden administration backs would establish a nationwide pill press and tableting registry, to enable law enforcement agencies to better track the number of machines operating and producing counterfeit pills.

The Biden administration is backing another legislative proposal to permanently label fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I narcotics under the Controlled Substance Act.

Another legislative proposal would require importers of small packaged items to provide more information to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. The senior administration official said the Biden administration anticipates this proposal will enable U.S. border security officials to better detect and identify packages carrying illicit fentanyl precursor chemicals and related machinery.

The senior administration official said the Biden administration would support other measures to increase penalties for drug smugglers and traffickers, although the official provided few specifics about these new penalties ahead of the July 31 announcements.

The Biden administration also is re-upping calls for Congress to pass more funding to hire additional border security and immigration officials and purchase new technology for detecting drug-smuggling efforts. This funding component was part of a multifaceted supplemental spending proposal that Biden submitted last fall that also included about $61 billion in new Ukraine-related spending, another $26 billion to sustain Israel’s military and to support humanitarian assistance efforts in the Gaza Strip, and additional funding for alliance-building in the Indo-Pacific region.

Lawmakers dropped the border funding component of Biden’s supplemental spending request in February after many Republican lawmakers argued that the new funding measures didn’t do enough to address their concerns about border security. While the Senate took another look at passing the border funding measures as a standalone bill in May, that standalone version saw less support than the original proposal wrapped into the broader supplemental spending proposal.

Illegal immigrants line up to be transferred by U.S. Border Patrol after having crossed the Bravo River in El Paso, Texas, as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on April 18, 2024. Herika Martinez/AFP via Getty Images

Many Republicans have argued that Biden hasn’t done enough throughout his presidency to prevent illegal border crossings and cross-border smuggling. In April, the Republican-controlled House Homeland Security Committee reported that border officials had recorded nearly 2 million known gotaways—instances in which border officials are aware of an illegal border crossing but are unable to stop it—under Biden’s tenure.

The same House committee report stated there have been more than 9.5 million border encounters nationwide, including 7.8 million at the southern border alone, since Biden took office.

Biden signed an executive order in June authorizing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to close the border and reject requests for asylum if the seven-day rolling average of border encounters exceeds 2,500 people a day. The border control executive order states that DHS can resume processing people through the border 14 calendar days after the average number of daily encounters drops below 1,500 for seven consecutive days.

Last week, DHS reported it has logged a 55 percent drop in encounters at the U.S. southern border since June and that the U.S. Border Patrol’s rolling seven-day average of border encounters now sits at about 1,800 per day.