White House calls on Congress to act on fentanyl crisis while GOP blames Harris for border crisis

The battle over fentanyl and the U.S. southern border continues to escalate as the White House calls on Congress to take action on a recent proposal while GOP lawmakers blame Vice President Kamala Harris for the open border allowing the drug into the country. 

On Wednesday, the Biden administration called on Congress to pass its "counter-fentanyl" proposal that would increase funding for border officials to help them seize more drugs and hold traffickers accountable. 

"The proposal would give border officials the tools they need to more effectively track and target the millions of small-dollar shipments that cross our borders every day—closing a loophole that drug traffickers exploit," the White House said. "It would establish a nation-wide pill press and tableting machine registry so that law enforcement officials can track these machines and protect against their illicit use in producing fake fentanyl pills."

The White House also pushed Congress to pass a bill that would increase penalties on drug traffickers, specifically those trafficking fentanyl, according to The Associated Press.

This request comes after GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump's campaign team and many Republican leaders have been calling Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, a "border czar" who failed at her job regarding the U.S. southern border. 

The House recently passed a resolution "strongly condemning" Harris for her job at the border. 

In March of 2021, Biden announced that Harris would tackle the migration surge, though Symone Sanders, then-chief vice president spokeswoman, the same week insisted Harris was "not doing the border" and had been tasked to "take on the diplomatic effort, with Mexico and countries in the northern triangle to address the root causes of migration." As a result, U.S. media have helped distance Harris from the disaster by arguing about the informal title of "border czar" instead of the lack of progress on the border crisis. 

Fentanyl is often smuggled over the U.S.-Mexico border, another reason many GOP lawmakers have advocated for the border to be shut down. In its announcement, the Biden administration announced that it had been engaging with other world leaders to combat the fentanyl trafficking.

Last year, the Department of Justice filed charges against four Chinese chemical manufacturing companies and eight people over allegations that they illegally trafficked chemicals used to make fentanyl.

Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., released his own "fact sheet" Wednesday that listed the failures of Biden and Harris' "open border" policy, including fentanyl trafficking. 

"More than 200,000 Americans have died from the fentanyl being smuggled across the Southwest border by the criminal cartels," the sheet reads. 

Green went on to reference a woman named Anne Fundner who spoke at the Republican National Convention. Fundner lost her 15-year-old son to fentanyl poisoning and she put the blame on both Biden and Harris for the open border, even referencing the vice president as "a joke" as “border czar.”

Former Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan has also been critical of Harris's job at the border, saying her previous comments about ICE were "vile" and "reckless." In November of 2018, when Harris was a senator, she compared ICE to the KKK, according to Fox News.

"She has doubled down [and] tripled down on supporting President Biden's open border policies," Morgan said on the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "She cannot separate herself now from this crisis."