[lenkite]

Quote from NPR article

"Last year, we seized about 700 pounds of fentanyl," Modlin stated. "That was encountered – 52% of that, so the majority of that – was encountered in the field. So that is predominantly being backpacked across the border."

And that seizure is from only a vanishing minority of migrants who were searched. Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants are just sneak in without any checking. The formal ports of entry undergo far more validation and hence more stuff is found.

[jncfhnb]

Perhaps you should also quote the part from the same article that states it’s American citizens doing the smuggling, not illegal immigrants

[addicted]

One can agree that illegal immigration is a problem that needs to be stemmed.

But where’s the fun in that.

The real fun lies in dehumanizing the illegal immigrants so one can hopefully start a pogrom against them. Now that’s fun!

[mensetmanusman]

If the border is open it doesn’t matter who is moving.

[jncfhnb]

Are you implying you believe the US southern border is open?

[mensetmanusman]

During the months where there are an average of 10k illegal crossings per day, some would argue that the border is open enough to be porous to about a towns worth of humans per day.

[jncfhnb]

There is, by definition, no illegal crossings when the border is open. So, no, I think your assertion is very ill informed

[mensetmanusman]

In good faith, when people mean open, they mean unenforced to the point of 10k people per day strolling in.

[JumpCrisscross]

> tens of thousands of illegal immigrants are just sneak in without any checking

One TEU can weigh up to 67,500 lbs [1]. Humans can’t carry more than 20 to 30% of their body weight for meaningful distances. To rival the capacity of a single container, assuming only really fit men, you’d need 1,350 backpackers (assuming 200 lb men carrying 50 lbs each, which is ridiculous).

If every one of the nation’s 2mm illegal crossers were a fit man carrying their maximum load on a backpack, it would total to the tonnage of 1,500 containers. The Port of LA processed over 500x that in June [2]. The throughput at a signal American port is 3+ orders of magnitude more than could possibly be carried by every illegal border crosser by backpack.

It’s wild for anyone with a basic sense of numeracy to believe that humans carrying backpacks are bringing a material amount of anything into this country, let alone a product for mass consumption.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-foot_equivalent_unit

[2] https://www.portoflosangeles.org/references/2024-news-releas...

[JeremyNT]

This stat in isolation doesn't tell you much, because it's based on what was caught.

The stuff they didn't catch is the problem, which they can only estimate.