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It’s not so much the people flooding across the southern border affecting Arizonans, as what some of the illegal immigrants carry with them.  

Illegal aliens don’t stay in the state, according to Pinal County, Arizona, Sheriff Mark Lamb. Instead, they travel to “California, Massachusetts, New York, Chicago, Iowa, Alabama,” he says, adding, “But what we are feeling is, just like every state and every American family, we’re feeling the effects of fentanyl.”

Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. 

“I don’t want to take away from 9/11, but I want to put it into perspective,” Lamb says. “On 9/11 we lost, I think, about 3,600 American lives that day … and we went to war for 20 years for that.”

An estimated 74,702 people died from fentanyl poisoning in America in 2023, a slight decline from the 76,226 fentanyl-related deaths in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

“Right now, China is putting fentanyl in the hands of the [Mexican drug] cartels,” Lamb explained.  

Many of the precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl originate in China. On Oct. 24, the Justice Department announced “charges against eight China-based companies and eight individuals we allege are responsible for trafficking precursor chemicals that cartels use to manufacture lethal fentanyl,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.  

China and the cartels “are managing to kill 100,000 American civilians a year, and our government doesn’t talk about it,” Lamb said. “They don’t talk about it in their politics. … I don’t hear [Vice President] Kamala Harris talking about it.”  

Lamb argues that the fentanyl crisis should be discussed more in the news and during the 2024 presidential election, but isn’t because “to talk about it would mean you’d have to accept responsibility [for] it, and to accept the responsibility would cost you an election.”  

The Harris campaign did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.  

According to Lamb, over 50% of all the fentanyl in America enters the U.S. through Arizona’s border with Mexico.  

In 2021, 44 children died from fentanyl poisoning in Arizona, according to the Arizona Child Fatality Review Program. Among the deaths, “seven were under the age of one,” Lamb said. “I mean, those statistics alone should get your elected officials unelected, you know? But we as Americans don’t seem to want to hold our elected officials accountable, because we were offended by … the way somebody talks or the things they tweet.”  

Lamb ran for U.S. Senate, but Republican Kari Lake defeated him in Arizona’s GOP primary election in July.  

The sheriff joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss what to expect on election night in Arizona, one of seven swing states, and the role the border crisis is playing in the way Americans are voting this election.

Watch the show above or listen below: