CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Border security and the growing problem of deadly and addictive drugs like fentanyl are high item concerns for Texas politicians.
When an officer uncovers drugs being smuggled in during a traffic stop, more than ever, they are having to take extra measures to protect their own lives.
The reason -- to prevent exposure to the dangerous and deadly drug that is fentanyl.
Many officers who are part of the Nueces County District Attorney's Criminal Interdiction Unit now have Narcan at the ready.
"Even with powder or kilos we are finding on traffic stops we are finding ways to test it without opening the bundles, because if that stuff goes airborne, it's inhaled by any of our officers we could have an overdose," said Supervisor for the Nueces County District Attorney's Criminal Interdiction Unit Mike Tamez.
Just a few months ago, a traffic stop just south of Robstown on Wednesday turned into a history-making drug bust. It was also the first liquid fentanyl bust in Nueces County, resulting in three gallons of the drug being seized.
The seizure just part of the latest battle against the opioid crisis in the Coastal Bend and something that has the attention of Texas Congressman Michael Cloud.
"We had 100,000 people die from fentanyl in the last year (in the US), from chemicals, a lot of them, the precursors are starting in China coming to cartels in Mexico that are putting them into our communities. At what point do we begin to look at this in a sense as a weapon of mass destruction," he said.
Those precursors are the chemicals and compounds used to make fentanyl in labs across the border.
"We hit these guys in Mexico, how do we take it back to the cartels we can take their precursors on interdiction stops, officers out on the highway actually making proactive stops looking for these precursors seizing them and two, lets take their money," Tamez said.
However, Tamez said it will take additional education for officers -- and funding. He believes Nueces County should join the Governor's disaster declaration in response to the ongoing border crisis.
"Operation Lone Star was an initiative started by the Governor. We have not been a Lone Star county, counties surrounding us are all Lone Star counties," he said. "What does that bring, it brings additional funding and that funding allows us to buy technology that can help us better find those precursors identify the precursors," said Tamez.
43 other counties, even some north of Nueces County are already part of it. Tamez has been in talks with newly elected county leaders to join the list.
"Unfortunately tech is very expensive, looking at a device, $70,000 dollars, if we are able to become a Lone Star county, the funding would be provided for us," he said.
Cloud said his new position on the Homeland Security subcommittee of the U.S. Appropriations Committee will allow him to battle on the national scale.
"It is unconscionable what we are doing to the communities in the United States. What we are allowing to happen to the lives of the people at the hands of the cartels," Cloud said.
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