US Customs and Border Protection partners with four-legged, sniffing counterparts as it solidifies its fight against illegal trafficking of fentanyl and firearms at the Mexico Border.

Border Protection Works with Four-Legged Partners

Goose, a Golden Retriever, is one of America's most reliable defenders against fentanyl trafficking at the Mexico border, who uses his nose to detect illicit drugs at San Diego's busy legal border crossing, where nearly 100,000 people enter the US each day.

The Golden Retriever is one of 536 US Customs and Border Protection canines trained to detect drugs, firearms, ammunition, money, and hidden passengers at land border crossings, airports, and seaports.

Customs officers at CBP's canine academy in Front Royal, Virginia, are paired with dogs that they train to detect marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, ecstasy, and fentanyl by filling chew toys with substitute narcotics that smell like an actual drug. According to Donna Sifford, the academy's director, the program typically features German Shepherds, Labrador Retrievers, Dutch Shepherds, and German Shorthaired Pointers, with three other Golden Retrievers in the program aside from Goose.

The advanced sense of smell of the dogs will help save lives, says Michael Gould, a founding member of the New York City Police Department's canine unit, acting like biosensors, Reuters reported.

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Fentanyl Rise in The US

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that US authorities previously approved as an anesthetic in 1968. However, law enforcement and health providers have to make it a priority as approximately 75,000 people died from overdoses in 2023, with the majority of seizures happening at Arizona and California legal border crossings, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Recent data from the US Sentencing Commission also indicates that most convicted fentanyl traffickers have been American citizens.

President Joe Biden has long urged Republicans in Congress to increase funding for border security, including efforts to combat fentanyl at legal border crossings.

CBP officials indicate that the funding could help expand the use of canines, including a pilot program that has trained six dogs to detect "precursor" chemicals used in the production of fentanyl.

These canines work alongside scanners and data analytics to detect fentanyl and other contraband, and having more canines and personnel partnered with them would enable further enhancements in their efforts, Sidney Aki, the CBP field office director who has worked as a canine handler since 1990, told Reuters at the San Ysidro port of entry in late May.

President Joe Biden outlined his administration's efforts to combat global criminal networks that have contributed to overdose deaths in the United States, where DHS made more than 2,000 arrests related to fentanyl seizures in the first five months of Fiscal Year 2024. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) also seized over 13,000 pounds of illicit fentanyl with more than 1,500 pill presses during that period, a fact sheet reads.

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