Trump gets tough on combating a surge in fentanyl trafficking and illegal migration at the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada.

By Sam Cooper | The Bureau

Summary

Breaking: President-Elect Donald Trump has announced plans to impose a 25% tariff on all imports from Mexico and Canada to combat fentanyl trafficking and illegal migration.

The policy is to be enacted through an executive order on January 20, the day Trump officially takes office. Emphasizing the connection between Canadian networks and Mexican cartels in drug trafficking, Trump has criticized both Canada and Mexico for failing to address what he describes as a crisis of drugs and illegal aliens entering the United States.

Months prior to this announcement, David Asher, a former Trump administration official, told The Bureau news outlet that U.S. investigators had traced fentanyl money-laundering networks to Toronto and Vancouver. These networks involve Triads laundering cash from fentanyl supplied by Mexican cartels, which source precursors from China. Asher criticized the Canadian government for insufficient cooperation in tackling these networks, suggesting political influences hinder law enforcement. Asher warned that failure to disrupt these networks exacerbates the fentanyl crisis, which claims tens of thousands of lives annually in North America.

“The key thing is the Canadian connection, and in almost all the investigations as far as money laundering, we saw the command control seemed to go back to our network analysis. When we seized their phones, we’d see Canada light up like a Christmas tree, especially Toronto, and also British Columbia,” Asher said.

Regarding allegations that Triads in Toronto and Vancouver are running fentanyl money-laundering networks for Mexican cartels, Asher added: “The question is, what does the Canadian government know, and why haven’t they tried to judicially prosecute?”

This is a developing story.

Read the full report at The Bureau here.