BORDER/DRUGS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/WALL: “In their ongoing push for $5.7 billion to expand the border wall, Trump administration officials have repeatedly pointed to the flow of drugs across the southern border as proof that such a wall is needed. President Donald Trump has used that line. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders has, too. But an analysis of data from the southern border indicates that the vast majority of narcotics enters through U.S. ports of entry, not the wide swaths of border in between where additional barriers could be erected. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics, 90 percent of heroin seized along the border, 88 percent of cocaine, 87 percent of methamphetamine, and 80 percent of fentanyl in the first 11 months of the 2018 fiscal year was caught trying to be smuggled in at legal crossing points.”
–Alan Gomez, “Fact-checking Trump officials: Most drugs enter US through legal ports of entry, not vast, open border,” USA Today, January 16, 2019 2:24 pm