In the greater Detroit area in Michigan, police chased down an illegal immigrant who was carrying $350,000 worth of narcotics.
Footage from an officer’s body cam showed the chase and arrest of the suspect.
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Officials said that the suspect was transporting 20,000 fentanyl pills from a Mexican drug cartel, WDIV reported.
The drugs were disguised as OxyContin prescription pills and were found along with 500 grams of powder fentanyl in the car of the suspect. A woman, who was also in the country illegally, was in the car, too.
The police said that much fentanyl could have led to the overdose and deaths of thousands of Michigan residents.
The chase happened on April 8, in Sterling Heights, Michigan, which is north of Detroit, WJBK reported.
The Sterling Height Police tried to pull over a BMW with tinted windows, but the driver refused to comply.
Officers chased the car to a dead-end road, where the driver then got out and ran on foot until he was arrested.
Fentanyl is a particularly deadly opioid that has become increasingly prolific and is often laced with other drugs, the CDC reported.
Unlike heroin and morphine, though, fentanyl is a much stronger drug and can kill much more quickly. Fentanyl is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, the CDC reported.
Over the past two years, the flow of fentanyl coming across the border has increased exponentially.
For example, Customs and Border Patrol in Laredo seized 588 pounds of the opioid in 2021. That is 11 times more fentanyl than the 50 pounds seized in 2020, the Washington Post reported.
As more fentanyl comes across the border, the number of Americans dying from opioid overdoses is also increasing.
More than 100,000 Americans die each year from drug overdoses, with a majority of those fatalities now linked to fentanyl.
Overdoses from fentanyl have become the leading cause of death for 18- to 45-year-old Americans, the Post reported.
In 2020, the number of 18- to 45-year-olds who died from fentanyl overdoses was 37,208. In 2021, that number was 41,587, Fox News reported.
That means that 175 people die every day in the U.S. from fentanyl poisoning, the Families Against Fentanyl data analysis shows.
As seen by the arrest of two individuals transporting fentanyl in Michigan, it is clear that the drug is spreading across the United States after it comes across the border.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration outlined that the drug cartels operating in the fentanyl trade control massive trafficking corridors into the U.S., particularly the corridors into Arizona and California.
Congress has labeled fentanyl as the “next wave of the opioid crisis,” and America has been facing it for decades now as it has taken the lives of hundreds and thousands of people.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
