In both Trump and Biden, US customs and border security are wasting millions with taxpayer funds and missing out on the opportunity to detect drugs.
Trump administrators are trying to cut down on Narcan Grants as the fentanyl crisis begins to fade
The Trump administration is considering cutting down its $56 million grant program that provides the life-or-dosing reversal drug Narcan.
Straight Arrow News
Federal agencies are tasked with intercepting illegal drugs at borders, and have lost the deployment of technology designed to do just that, according to federal watchdogs.
Investigators say U.S. customs and border protections may have wasted millions of people with taxpayer funds, drugs smuggled into the country and lost key tools to combat the fentanyl epidemic.
Mistreatment of the program from 2020 to 2024 spanned both the first Trump and Biden administrations.
At the time, Congress, facing a national crisis of fentanyl overdose, installed $570 million in CBP in fiscal 2019 by purchasing “non-intrusive testing technology” at land ports.
Known as “NII” for short, the technology uses x-rays or gamma rays to find suspicious items hidden in passenger cars on the US-Mexico border. Railway car or freight container. With luggage and packaging.
Between 2020 and 2024, investigators discovered that CBP purchased 150 large NII systems, but deployed and installed only 50. The rest is still being built during the review period. 43 other machines worth $96 million were stored.
According to the report, over 360 other NII systems have already been installed, but 166 or 46% were inoperable. Some were in ruins for almost a year.
“CBP did not follow the DHS acquisition policy, did not consider relevant information during planning, and did not have a clear maintenance and maintenance plan for the large NII system,” the investigator said in the report.
In a response included in the report, a senior CBP official said the report “lacks important context” because “NII is just one of multiple tools” used by customs officials to detect contraband.
CBP pursues a policy of “supporting border security through a layered approach that reduces overreliance on a single point or program.”
Moak has agreed to WatchDog’s recommendations for developing plans to deploy, install and maintain NII systems with a lifecycle cost of $6.9 billion, including purchases, installments, maintenance and final disposal.
Last year, CBP screened nearly 15 million passenger cars at ports along the US-Mexico border, according to Transportation Bureau statistics.
