Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons said Tuesday on Newsmax that the U.S. government is fulfilling its duty by preventing drug cartels from delivering dangerous chemicals and narcotics into American communities.
Lyons defended the government's latest counter-narcotics efforts during an appearance on "Rob Schmitt Tonight," saying:
"What I can tell you is the cartels are a serious problem, right from the Homeland Security investigative side of it. We are out there every day encountering these Venezuelan gangs tied to these cartels. So President [Donald] Trump has made it clear that these narco-terrorists are foreign terrorist organizations, and we're treating it as such here in domestic law enforcement, partnering with the Coast Guard or other DHS entities like Customs and Border Protection."
"We're making sure that these criminal actors don't bring these poisons and dangerous chemicals to our neighborhoods," he added.
Lyons' comments came as Trump announced that U.S. military forces destroyed a second alleged Venezuelan drug vessel traveling in international waters. Trump said the strike, which killed three men, was part of a broader campaign targeting extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narco-terrorists.
Lyons emphasized that Homeland Security Investigations is working aggressively against cartel operations. "They're made up of the best special agents around," he said. "We just recently had a huge seizure, the largest law enforcement seizure in history, of fentanyl precursors that we stopped at sea — 24 tractor-trailers worth, over $1 billion worth of precursors that came from China, that was scheduled to go to the cartels. We're out there stopping it every day."
When asked if Venezuela was a major source of the trafficking, Lyons noted that enforcement at the southern border has forced cartels to seek alternate routes. "We're seeing a lot of it. Just because the Border Patrol has done such an incredible job of sealing the border, they're having to find other ways to do it," he said.
"We're also seeing a huge amount coming from the Indo-Pacific region, seeing a lot coming from China, believe it or not, seeing a lot coming that Australia has to deal with coming from Fiji. They're finding different ways to ship these precursors that are killing American citizens," Lyons said.
He argued that previous administrations had failed to make progress on stemming fentanyl and drug trafficking.
"I think that's the one frustrating thing for us in law enforcement is we have so many elected officials that have run on trying to stop fentanyl and trying to stop these drugs from entering, but no one has done it until President Trump got there," Lyons said. "And now we're actually taking it seriously and bringing the fight to them."
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Jim Thomas ✉
Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.
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