Top officials in President Donald Trump’s administration revealed this week what they believe to be the top threat facing the homeland.
Top Trump administration officials told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee in a report that one of the biggest threats to U.S. national security is fentanyl and the international drug gangs that bring the deadly street drug into the country.
“Cartels were largely responsible for the deaths of more than 54,000 U.S. citizens from synthetic opioids” during the 12-month period that ended in October 2024, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said during opening remarks.
The U.S. Intelligence Community’s annual threat assessment for 2025, which came out on Tuesday, gave a slightly different number: it said that cartel activity could be responsible for 52,000 deaths in the U.S.
Overdoses of fentanyl, methamphetamines, and other street drugs killed about 84,000 people in the U.S. during that time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At the hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who is in charge of the Intelligence Committee, said that the Trump administration has made fentanyl a top priority, even more so than other threats to national security from Iran, North Korea, and Russia.
“For the first time, the annual threat assessment lists foreign illicit drug actors as the very first threat to our country,” Cotton said, singling out “Mexican-based cartels using precursors [industrial chemicals] produced in China.”
While the Trump team tried to focus on fentanyl, a growing scandal over the use of a civilian messaging app called Signal by administration officials planning a bombing mission in Yemen took a lot of attention away from their work.
As head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Tom Cotton asked top U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday if China is doing enough to stop the sale and shipment of industrial chemicals that are used to make street fentanyl, which kills tens of thousands of people in the U.S. every year.
In the U.S., fentanyl first appeared on the street in 2012. It quickly replaced heroin and prescription painkillers as the most dangerous opioid that criminal gangs sold. During Trump’s first term in office, the number of deaths mostly caused by fentanyl rose sharply, by more than 30 percent in 2020 alone.
In recent years, opioids have caused less harm. According to the most recent data from the CDC, the number of fatal overdoses dropped more than 26% from their highest point in 2023 to October of last year. A big part of the Biden administration’s response to the crisis was taking steps to protect public health.
But President Trump has said that his tariffs on Canada, China, and Mexico are because he is worried about the trafficking of fentanyl. In an executive order, Trump made cartels the first groups he called terrorist groups. He has also said that drug dealers should be put to death.
Rep. Greg Steube of Florida is one of the Republicans who want the U.S. to start military operations against drug cartels in Mexico and other places.
At the hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Cotton asked John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, if China is doing enough to stop the export of chemicals used by drug gangs that are similar to fentanyl.
“No, there’s nothing to prevent China, the People’s Republic of China, from cracking down on fentanyl precursors,” Ratcliffe replied.
He said that companies with ties to China’s Communist Party are still very important in making illegal fentanyl.
“There are more than six hundred PRC-related companies that produce those precursor chemicals in an industry that produces more than $1.5 trillion [in revenue],” Ratcliffe said.
Ratcliffe described Chinese cooperation in fighting drug smuggling as “intermittent in nature and limited in nature.”
Most experts on drug policy agree that cartels and other drug gangs have played a big part in the deadliest overdose epidemic in U.S. history. Companies in China and gangs in Mexico are particularly to blame.