Texas Border Business
Texas Border Business
Watch the video of the DEA Director Terry Cole below:
In a video message released on the DEA’s official social media platforms, DEA Director Terry Cole declared that the agency has never been more focused on combating the fentanyl crisis, describing the synthetic opioid as an unprecedented threat that continues to devastate the United States.
“Every day I walk into DEA headquarters, I’m reminded of DEA’s mission. I see the faces of fentanyl. I see Americans who have lost their lives at the hands of the cartels,” Cole said.
He said the DEA is deploying its global resources against those responsible for manufacturing and trafficking fentanyl.
“DEA has never been more focused, more aligned, or more dedicated to attacking the fentanyl crisis than we are right now,” Cole said. “Across the globe, DEA is bringing the full weight of our global enterprise to this fight. We are hunting the foreign terrorists responsible. This includes every single facilitator, distributor, and every single individual who profits from this poison.”
Cole identified Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) as the DEA’s top enforcement priority.
“Fentanyl is the threat we’ve never seen before. The Mexican cartels, Sinaloa and CJNG, are priority number one for the DEA. It’s shattered families, devastated communities, and challenged law enforcement at every level. The American people expect and deserve the DEA to eliminate this threat, and that is exactly what we are doing.”
Since the current administration took office, Cole said, the DEA has seized more than 14,000 kilograms of fentanyland 62 million fentanyl pills—an amount equivalent to an estimated 478 million potentially deadly doses.
Calling enforcement the foundation of the agency, Cole drew on his experience as a DEA special agent who served in Colombia, Afghanistan, and Mexico, emphasizing the importance of international cooperation in dismantling transnational criminal organizations.
He also credited President Donald Trump and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche for supporting the agency’s efforts.
“DEA is able to attack this crisis from every possible angle,” he said.
Cole concluded by reaffirming the agency’s commitment to what he called “a fentanyl-free America.”
“That isn’t a catchphrase. That isn’t a slogan. This is our promise to the American people that we are responding with urgency, with resolve, and with the same unbreakable determination that has defined this agency for more than five decades. We are all gas, no brakes.”
Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid approximately 50 times more potent than heroin and up to 100 times more potent than morphine, has become the leading driver of overdose deaths in the United States. Because even microscopic amounts can be fatal, illicitly manufactured fentanyl—often disguised as counterfeit prescription pills or mixed into other narcotics—has transformed the nation’s drug epidemic into one of its most urgent public health and law enforcement challenges.
Cole’s remarks underscore the DEA’s intensified campaign against the transnational criminal organizations responsible for trafficking fentanyl into the United States and its commitment to disrupting every stage of the supply chain.
