Republican Rep. Mike Collins said he would shut down all immigration into the U.S. until the southern border is ‘secure’ and questioned why President Biden is touting a downtick in crossings.
‘I’d put a moratorium on immigration,’ the freshman Georgia Republican told DailyMail.com in an interview. ‘I’d love to do that right now until we get that border secure.’
Collins, together with Democratic Rep. Yadira Caraveo, Colo., was the lead author of legislation that unanimously passed the House that would boost research to combat the growing presence of the powerful animal sedative xylazine, also known as tranq.
Republican Rep. Mike Collins said he would shut down all immigration into the U.S. until the southern border is ‘secure’ and questioned why President Biden is touting a downtick in crossings
Migrants trying to enter the U.S. from Mexico approach the site where workers are assembling large buoys to be used as a border barrier along the banks of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, Tuesday, July 11, 2023
Now the Senate will take the bill up with tweaks before the House will vote on it again before it makes it to the president’s desk.
The bill directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to conduct research on tranq and other novel synthetic drugs, develop new tests for detection, and establish partnerships with front-line entities that are often the first points of contact with new street drugs.
‘With that border wide open, that’s been a main source for drugs coming across in our country for decades,’ said Collins. ‘Now that marijuana is no longer a profitable product for the cartels to bring across, because America has legalized marijuana, they’ve moved on to harsher things like opioids laced with fentanyl. And now they’re mixing in other additives inside fentanyl to where Narcan is not effective.’
But the number of people trying to cross the border has fallen dramatically. The Department of Homeland Security put out a press release last month noting that the number of people attempting to cross had fallen over 70 percent since the expiration of Title 42, the pandemic-era health rule that allowed for immediate deportation. That figure does not include those who evade border detection.
The Biden administration attributed that to their ‘execution’ of a plan that cracked down on unlawful pathways and expanded paths for legal migration.
Collins isn’t buying it.
‘Title 42, that’s not the problem. The problem is they don’t have the border secure.’
‘I think that no matter what they what they tout, all you gotta do is go down to the border and look for yourself,’ the congressman said.
‘You’ll see the flood of people that are still coming across. You’ll see the ranchers and get up every day and the first thing they do is walk their land to see if there’s any dead migrants that have crossed the border and didn’t make sure there’s any kids out there that are roaming around homeless.’
The Drug and Enforcement Administration (DEA) has reported skyrocketing levels of xylazine detection. In the southern region of the country, detection doubled tripled 2020 and 2021.
Gruesome images are emerging of addicts in U.S. cities who take drugs mixed with tranq and develop large open sores prone to infection and people in ‘zombie-like’ states.
‘I’d put a moratorium on immigration,’ the freshman Georgia Republican told DailyMail.com in an interview. ‘I’d love to do that right now until we get that border secure’
In addition to rotting flesh that can lead to amputation, tranq can also cause a dangerous decrease in heart rates and breathing levels.
Federal officials have released a new strategy they hope will reduce xylazine-related overdose deaths by 15 percent by 2025.
But the drug is already causing thousands of deaths. A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that the number of Americans being killed by a flesh-rotting street drug has soared more than 15-fold in the past three years.
The report said monthly overdose deaths involving xylazine rose from 12 in January 2019 to 188 in June 2022.
But officials only looked at 20 states plus D.C., meaning the true number involving the powerful animal tranquilizer is bound to be higher.
The drug is also regularly mixed into fentanyl. Synthetic opioids other than methadone — primarily fentanyl — caused 70,601 overdose deaths in 2021, meaning tranq and fentanyl yearly deaths combined are already around 71,000.
According to the DEA, in 2020, there were 808 drug overdoses reported in which xylazine played a role. That figure skyrocketed to 3,089 in 2021.
Some states have already scheduled the drug, meaning they classified it as having a ‘high potential for abuse or addiction,’ and the White House is considering scheduling the sedative at the federal level.
This would make xylazine subject to regulatory restrictions similar to opioids and amphetamines.
Efforts to schedule the drug have faced pushback from veterinarians, farmers and others who regularly work with the drug with the intended use as an animal sedative.
