NYPD Liaisons Going to Arizona, Colombia to Help With Southern Border Crisis

Sgt. First Class Thomas Evitts (R) and Border Patrol Agent Garcia at the Tucson Sector Border Patrol headquarters in Nogales, Ariz., on May 23, 2018. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

Police officers from New York City will soon be on their way to Tucson, Arizona, and Bogota, Colombia, to help secure America’s borders as part of an expansion to the law enforcement agency’s International Liaison Program.

New York Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism, Rebecca Weiner, said during the Jan. 31 announcement at the “State of the NYPD address” that two officers will be sent to Tucson and Bogota as part of a plan to combat the flow of drugs, guns, and people pouring through the southern United States border toward the Big Apple.

According to Commissioner Weiner, the NYPD official in Tucson will be working with U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) to assist with fentanyl searches, the flow of illegal immigrants coming across the border, and disrupting international crime groups that might have a footprint in New York City. The liaison to Bogota will be working with the Colombian National Police on issues such as drug trafficking, tracking migrant routes, and other transnational crimes.

“These posts will help the NYPD address the myriad issues that are coming across our southern border, from guns to drugs to people,” Commissioner Weiner said.

“We’re not going to wait for the problem to come to us. We’re not going to say this is someone else’s responsibility. It’s our job to protect our city, and so we have to do that by understanding really at the root of the problem is how these scourges that I mentioned are coming to New York.”

Throughout the ongoing border crisis, record illegal immigrants and drugs have been coming into America. In less than three years, the amount of deadly fentanyl seized at the southern border per month has increased significantly. In the fiscal year of 2020, CBP seized an average of 445 pounds of fentanyl per month. Meanwhile, 2021 saw 882 pounds seized per month. By 2022, it had increased to 1,175 pounds. Throughout 2023, CBP was averaging roughly 2,427 pounds of fentanyl seized per month.

NYPD International Liaison Program Already Paying Dividends

Funded by the nonprofit New York City Police Foundation, there are currently 18 officers operating in 14 locations around the world as part of the NYPD’s International Liaison Program in countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Commissioner Weiner believes relationships forged during the program, along with potential intelligence gathered, are vital to protecting New York in the long term.

A situation she says is perfectly illustrated by the liaison in Tel Aviv, who is embedded with the Israeli International Police, when he informed her about the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel during a phone call. According to Commissioner Weiner, the Tel Aviv liaison has since sent hourly updates to NYPD headquarters in lower Manhattan.

“Within hours of that phone call, we were back in New York City and in the midst of responding to the first of more than 600 protests related to the conflict that have taken place here since Oct. 7,” Commissioner Weiner said.

“Without the International Liaison Program, the NYPD would be myopic, resigned to policing the most global and interconnected city in the world without truly seeing beyond our borders,” she added.