In just 60 days, President Trump delivered on his campaign promise to close the border to illegal aliens and deport criminals en masse. Now he faces an even bigger challenge: Cutting off the pipeline of deadly drugs entering through the southern border's most "secure" points of entry—and reckoning with the mafia that's conquered our southern neighbor.

The drug crisis has never been worse. In 1981, just 3.4 of every 100,000 American males died from drug-induced causes. Today it’s 47.2—and climbing. 

108,000 Americans died from drug overdose in 2023, an all-time high—70% of them from opioids. While drug-related deaths fell in 2024, experts fear it may only be a brief respite before the carnage returns.

The United States leads the world in illegal drug demand even after a generation of “Just Say No” messaging meant to cut consumption. Decades ago, it was Mexican marijuana and methamphetamines or Colombian cocaine surging across the border. In the past five years, synthetic opioids—such as deadly fentanyl and even deadlier nitazenes—have conquered the black market, finding a massive market pre-addicted to American-made prescription opioids such as Oxycontin and Vicodin, further devastating countless communities. Americans consume four times as many opioid doses as Britons: 50,000 pills per one million people every day. In Kermit, West Virginia, nine million opioid pills flooded a town of just 400 residents in two years, driven in part by doctors who over-prescribe painkillers, a glut of drug advertisements—banned in all but one other country, New Zealand—and our country’s pervasive pill-popping culture.

Then there's Mexico's descent into Taliban-style warfare.