After visiting the California-Mexico border last weekend, U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is renewing two of her efforts to increase consequences for individuals who aid and abet cartel activity or distribute fentanyl.
“An open border is a drug lord’s dream. It leaves Americans vulnerable to cartels, the criminals who aid them, and those who distribute deadly drugs,” said Ernst. “The criminals profiting from this administration’s border crisis and the fentanyl epidemic need to face consequences that match their crimes, which is what my efforts do.”
The Iowa senator is reintroducing her effort to increase penalties for cartel “spotters” – individuals who aid illegal cartel activity at the border by surveilling Border Patrol. Currently, the cartels employ “spotters” to monitor stretches of the Southern border and report on Border Patrol movements, equipment locations, and other law enforcement activity. Ernst’s bill, the Transnational Criminal Organization Illicit Spotter Prevention and Elimination Act, would harshen penalties on spotters by increasing fines and imposing a maximum prison time of 10 years on those convicted of helping cartels.
Ernst is also joining Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in reintroducing the Felony Murder for Deadly Fentanyl Distribution Act which makes the distribution of fentanyl resulting in death punishable by federal felony murder charges. According to the latest data, fentanyl kills 196 Americans per day, and fentanyl overdoses have become the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18-49.
The billions sent to the crooks and Nazis in Ukraine could have gone a long way towards protecting the US borders and fixing the infrastructure. I guess the money going to politicians from the money laundering via Ukraine and the big bucks given by defense contractors is more important. Now these lunatics in DC want to provoke war with China. They are going to get us all killed in a nuclear war either for the most corrupt country in Europe or for Taiwan, which is part of China according to our own policy. They are all insane. BTW, when is Biden going to be impeached for blowing up the Nordstream pipeline? That was an act of war against Russia and Germany. Not a peep from the MSM.
The border needs to be secure and the illegal drugs need to stop. Good for Ernst. She needs to do a lot of good things to get in good graces with voters after she turned her back on them voting for the respect for marriage act. She got caught and she squealed, she knows she screwed up.