US Citizens Were 80.2 Percent of Crossers with Fentanyl at Ports of Entry from 2019 to 2024

Many people wrongly believe that immigration is critical to the illicit supply of fentanyl in the United States. However, proponents of this view have offered little more than speculation to support it. New data obtained by the Cato Institute via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request calls this belief into question. The new dataset shows that US citizens comprised 80 percent of individuals caught with fentanyl during border crossings at ports of entry from 2019 to 2024. The FOIA dataset contains individual records regarding each person encountered by officials at US ports of entry from whom fentanyl was seized. Figure 1 shows the citizenship of individuals arrested with fentanyl from fiscal year (FY) 2019 to 2024, as of June. Overall, the dataset reveals that out of 9,473 individuals associated with a fentanyl seizure, 7,598 were US citizens (80.2 percent).