Fact Check: JD Vance Claims Kamala Harris Let ‘Record Levels’ of Fentanyl into U.S. Communities

CLAIM: “Kamala Harris let in fentanyl into our communities at record levels,” Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) said on Tuesday during CBS’s vice presidential debate.

VERDICT: Mostly true. Drug-related deaths hit a record high under the watch of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s administration, and many of those deaths are linked to fentanyl.

Vance, who is former President Donald Trump’s running mate, made his comments during the debate with Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN).

“We have a historic immigration crisis because Kamala Harris started and said that she wanted to undo all of Donald Trump’s border policies. Ninety-four executive orders suspending deportations, decriminalizing illegal aliens, massively increasing the asylum fraud that exists in our system, that has opened the floodgates,” he continued:

And what it’s meant is that a lot of fentanyl is coming into our country. I had a mother who struggled with opioid addiction and has gotten clean. I don’t want people who are struggling with addiction to be deprived of their second chance because Kamala Harris let in fentanyl into our communities at record levels. You’ve got to stop the bleeding. You’ve got to reimplement Donald Trump’s border policies, build the wall, reimplement deportations.

It is important to note that Harris has said she will “stop the flow of illegal fentanyl” pouring into the nation, Breitbart News reported on Friday.

“In 2021, the U.S. recorded almost 107,000 drug overdoses and poisonings. In 2022, these deaths hit an annual record, peaking at more than 111,000 deaths. In 2023, over 107,500 Americans died from drug overdoses and poisonings,” the article stated, citing figures from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

“Many of these deaths are linked to fentanyl, where victims were unaware that opioids they were consuming were laced with the deadly drug,” the report noted.

In June, the Republican National Committee (RNC) said about 30.3 tons of fentanyl have crossed the nation’s southern border since Biden took office, per Breitbart News.

According to Breitbart News Senior Contributor Peter Schweizer, the pipeline of fentanyl into the United States is nearly totally controlled by China as part of a multi-pronged strategy to weaken the United States and “encourage social chaos.” President Biden and Governor Walz have troubling ties to Chinese businesses and Communist party officials.