Sunrise gatherings, dances and speeches mark celebration of culture on Indigenous Peoples Day - By Mark Thiessen And Morgan Lee Associated Press
Events across the country, including a sunrise gathering in Minneapolis, a rally at the statehouse in Maine, and traditional dancing, music and food in Alaska and Arizona, marked celebrations of Indigenous Peoples Day.
The ceremonies, speeches and performances in traditional regalia Monday came two years after President Joe Biden officially commemorated the day honoring "America's first inhabitants and the Tribal Nations that continue to thrive today."
At a gathering in Phoenix where dancers performed in traditional Aztec clothing, Sifa Matafahi said it was an opportunity to "pay respect to Indigenous cultures ... to reflect on our past and history while also acknowledging our cultural presence."
In Minnesota, about 150 people, including the governor and lieutenant governor, attended a sunrise prayer and ceremony at Bde Maka Ska, a lake surrounded by parkland on the south side of Minneapolis.
"Today, we recognize our ancestors and predecessors who really laid the foundation for us to stand," said Thorne LaPointe, an organizer, who is Sicangu Lakota. "And we will always recognize our elders who are here and those who have gone on before us, who really kicked open the doors in their time, nationally and internationally."
Seventeen states and Washington, D.C., have holidays honoring Indigenous people, according to the Pew Research Center. Many of them celebrate it on the second Monday of October, pivoting from a day long rooted in the celebration of explorer Christopher Columbus to one focused on the people whose lives and culture were forever changed by colonialism. Dozens of cities and school systems also observe Indigenous Peoples Day.
In Augusta, Maine, several hundred people celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day by rallying outside the State House in support of a Nov. 7 statewide vote that would restore language about the state's obligations to Native American tribes to printed versions of its constitution.
Maulian Bryant, Penobscot Nation ambassador and president of the Wabanaki Alliance, said once people understand the importance to Native Americans, they will support it like they did when towns, and then the state, enacted Indigenous Peoples Day.
Bryant recalled the successful grassroots conversations that took place about the legacy of Columbus, whose arrival brought violence, disease and suffering to Native Americans.
"We want to honor the true stewards of these lands," she said.
Some who gathered for a ceremony in Anchorage, Alaska, said such a celebration would have been unheard of there six decades ago.
Gina Ondola, a Dena'ina Athabascan from the city, said she graduated from East Anchorage High School in 1962 with only four or five other Alaska Natives in her class and certainly no Indigenous culture club.
"We didn't learn much about our history," she said. Instead they were taught how white Europeans who came to North America were slaughtered by Native Americans.
"When I was growing up, I didn't feel too much pride in being Native. I always heard about 'drunk Natives,'" said Odola, who was wearing black gloves with red and white beadwork to represent her family's colors.
"It feels good for me to be able to feel pride in who I am," she said.
The Anchorage celebration included Alaska Native dance groups, traditional Alaska Native game demonstrations and a student wearing a "Molly of Denali" costume. The PBS show was the nation's first children's series to feature Indigenous leads.
Abigael Hollis, a freshman film student at the Institute of American Indian Arts, was among those who attended a powwow at a downtown plaza in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day. It brought together Native American dancing groups from throughout the state and beyond, as well as Native American jewelers, potters and weavers who sold artwork at outdoor stands.
"It's celebrating the fact that my ancestors lived to have me, and that we're still around and that we can celebrate each other and love each other," said Hollis, who is of Cherokee ancestry and wore traditional dress, including a coming-of-age necklace made of buffalo bone and glass beads.
New Mexico, which is home to 23 federally recognized Native American communities, replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day through legislation in 2019.
The Santa Fe festival began with a blessing by dancers from nearby Tesuque Pueblo — an acknowledgement that the city stands on the pueblo's ancestral lands, said Caren Gala, who heads the Santa Fe Indigenous Center and helped organize the powwow.
"We wanted to pay respect and homage to that — that this is their land," said Gala, who is affiliated with three pueblos, Laguna, Taos and Nambé.
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Lee reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Associated Press writers David Sharp in Augusta, Maine and Mark Vancleave in Minneapolis, and photographer Ross Franklin in Phoenix contributed to this report.
NM teacher vacancies are up, according to report - Santa Fe New Mexican, KUNM News
A new report shows teacher vacancies in New Mexico are up again after seeing a significant decline last year.
The Southwest Outreach Academic Research Evaluation and Policy Center at New Mexico State University has released an annual Educator Vacancy Report since 2019.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports it shows the state experienced a 9% jump in teacher vacancies, with 751 unfilled positions statewide.
The report shows the state is particularly short-staffed on elementary, math, science and special education teachers.
The state is also in need of more educational assistants, with 482 positions vacant.
The unfilled educator positions are up this year despite recent wage increases for teachers and EAs.
PNM settles disability discrimination lawsuit - Albuquerque Business First, KUNM News
The Public Service Company of New Mexico and PNMR Services Company, or PNM, is set to pay out $750,000 to settle an employment discrimination lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and charged PNM with disability discrimination, saying it didn’t accommodate qualified employees with disabilities, and even fired employees because of them.
The money will go towards back pay and damages for ten individuals.
A spokesperson for the company told Albuquerque Business First that PNM denies the allegations, but intends to do more to prevent discrimination.
$4 million federal grant to support UNM midwifery program - Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
The federal Health Resources and Services Administration has awarded the University of New Mexico College of Nursing a $4 million grant through its Advancing Midwifery Outcomes and Resiliency program.
The Albuquerque Journal reports UNM says it will put the bulk of the funds toward student scholarships. The funds will also be spent on awareness building of the practice of nurse midwifery.
A spokesperson for the university told the Journal that the scholarships should begin next spring, though criteria is still being worked out. The plan is to award $40,000 for tuition and fees over four years to 65 midwifery students.
The College of Nursing says increasing the number of nurse-midwives in New Mexico will likely increase maternal health in the state, as well.
Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta brings colorful displays to the New Mexico sky - By Gabe Stern Associated Press/Report For America
The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta has brought colorful displays to the New Mexico sky in an international event that attracts hundreds of thousands of spectators every year.
The event started Saturday with a drone light show before sunrise followed by a mass ascension of hot air balloons. Over nine days, local residents and visitors will be treated to a cavalcade of colorful and special-shaped balloons.
The annual gathering has become a major economic driver for the state's biggest city. The Rio Grande and nearby mountains provide spectacular backdrops to the fiesta that began with a few pilots launching 13 balloons from an open lot near a shopping center on what was the edge of Albuquerque in 1972.
The fiesta has morphed into one of the most photographed events in the world, now based at Balloon Fiesta Park. Balloon designs have featured cartoon animals, Star Wars characters and even the polar bear found on Klondike bars.
"But they're still all about the basics," said fiesta director Sam Parks, who flies a globe-style balloon modeled after one flown by the fiesta's late founder Sid Cutter. "You add heat to a big bag of air and you go up."
Nearly 830,000 people from around the world attended last year's event. Scheduled nighttime events include fireworks and balloon glows, in which hot air balloons are inflated and lit up from the ground.
One of the biggest events in aviation, the Gordon Bennett competition, also launched Saturday night. Pilots navigate hydrogen-filled balloons high in the air and the ones who fly the farthest win.
The balloons are different than those featured throughout the Albuquerque fiesta that stay local.
Some 550 balloon pilots are registered to fly during the fiesta, seeking to take advantage of a phenomenon known as the "Albuquerque box," when the wind blows in opposite directions at different elevations, allowing skillful pilots to bring a balloon back to a spot near the point of takeoff.
Visitors to the event also can pay to go aloft for views of the Sandia Mountains to the west and New Mexico's capital, Santa Fe, farther north.
"It has become part of the culture," Parks said. "The thread, if you will, of those here."
Elizabeth Wright-Smith, who is flying the Smokey Bear balloon this week, said she reunites with friends from all over the country at the fiesta that she would not see otherwise. As of early Saturday afternoon, she had already run into 30 people she had met from various balloon races, safety seminars and other events across the country.
"It's a big reunion," she said.
Her favorite part of the fiesta is watching and interacting with the thousands of spectators who flock to Balloon Fiesta Park, which grow smaller as she ascends in her balloon. The sky was clear Saturday – a contrast from last year, when off-and-on rain left parts of the fiesta soggy.
"Pictures don't do it justice, videos don't do it justice," Wright-Smith said. "You've got to be standing there watching them to really get it."
Next legislative session ‘make or break’ for N.M. health councils - Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
As the U.S. government abandoned its response to the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, many federally funded public health services have been diminished or gone away.
A large federal grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has allowed groups in New Mexico devoted to public health in local communities to mitigate the effects of the virus and COVID-19, the disease it causes. But that grant will run out in May 2024.
Now, a group of New Mexico lawmakers are getting ready to boost state funding to not only make up for the grant’s end but also fully fund health councils so they can achieve their mission.
Rep. Anthony Allison (D-Fruitland) said Thursday he will for a third time introduce legislation to increase the amount of state money going to 33 health councils operating in every county in New Mexico, and another nine based in tribal nations around the state, who work alongside the New Mexico Department of Health.
“We’re not done,” Allison (Diné) said in a phone interview. “If we’re going to go down, we’re going to go down fighting. That’s how much I believe in the health councils.”
He will have backup in the upcoming session from Rep. Elizabeth Thomson (D-Albuquerque), who co-sponsored Allison’s bill to fund public health councils last session. She said the only people who truly know what’s going on in local communities and tribal nations are those who are there every day.
“We really need to hear the voices of the people who are living it every day,” Thomson said. “Unless they come up with another way, the only way we’re really able to get that vital information, in my mind, is from the people who live there, and we need to fund them to do it.”
Allison said he will also be joined by Sens. Elizabeth Stefanics (D-Albuquerque) and Siah Correa Hemphill (D-Silver City).
In Allison’s district, where the majority of residents are Diné people, and many others across the state encompassing the Pueblos, health councils have been “the frontline defense against COVID,” he said.
They serve as the public health hubs for local communities, and did COVID contact tracing. In 2022, health councils organized more than 24,000 vaccine equity events, and helped get more than 345,000 New Mexicans vaccinated, independent of vaccinations done by hospitals or other entities.
“The health councils assisted with behavioral and mental health, and if we addressed mental health and behavioral health, we would not have the problems of gun violence, domestic violence, and things like that,” Allison said.
Without sustained funding every year, that work would be disrupted, according to Valeria Alarcón, executive director of the New Mexico Alliance of Health Councils.
NEXT SESSION WILL ‘MAKE OR BREAK’ COUNCILS
The upcoming legislative session will determine the future of health councils, Alarcón said.
“This is the legislative session that is going to make or break this very instrumental mechanism of public health,” Alarcón said.
What’s more, the New Mexico Department of Health did not include health councils in its proposed budget lawmakers will consider in January.
Like all state agencies do every year, the health department on Sept. 1 submitted its proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year to the Legislative Finance Committee (LFC).
Source New Mexico reviewed the 141-page appropriation request, and could not find any specific appropriation for health councils. In a written statement, a spokesperson for the state department of health did not directly respond to a question asking if there is one.
“NMDOH is actively pursuing additional funding for Health Councils, collaborating with partners like the New Mexico Alliance of Health Councils, the Centers for Health Innovation, and funders,” Department of Health spokesperson Jodi McGinnis Porter said. “Although these sources have not materialized yet, we remain committed to supporting Health Councils.”
Alarcón has presented data to lawmakers, most recently on Sept. 19, showing the amount of state funding for each public health council only covers one part-time worker and is not enough to meet their duties under state law.
McGinnis Porter said the department of health set aside about $6.5 million for health councils over the last three years. That money comes from a grant made possible by a federal law passed in 2021 tied to the federal public health emergency, which was declared over earlier this year.
The grant runs out on May 31, 2024, according to the CDC.
The drying up grant was meant to “enhance the capacity and technical support for health councils to better address community health priorities in the face of COVID,” McGinnis Porter said. It also supported other local groups “in driving the desired system changes to improve health for our communities,” she said.
“As the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency ends, states are increasingly relying on state legislature general funds to sustain critical systems for our most vulnerable communities,” McGinnis Porter said. “Like many states, New Mexico lacks the capacity to fully replace federal funds with state resources.”
The New Mexico Department of Health’s total budget this year exceeded $771 million, with almost half funded by the state Legislature and the rest coming from the federal government.
The state has no reason to be stingy with money, with billions of dollars in savings and billions more coming from historic oil and gas extraction.
With the CDC funding going away, and without some kind of replacement, two-thirds of the health councils could dissolve in May 2024, Alarcón said. If the Legislature doesn’t fund them, the people doing the volunteer work for them will burn out, Thomson said.
“It’s like asking NMDOH, health councils — all of us, all these partners — to go run a marathon on all these urgent matters in public health, but I’m going to cut all your legs off, so good luck in finishing the marathon,” she said.
COMMUNITY HEALTH PLANNING AT STAKE
The Department of Health’s proposed budget does contain references to the State Health Improvement Plan, which is informed by local health councils’ reporting on shortcomings in local health systems.
Health councils’ purpose under state law, McGinnis Porter said, is to develop community health plans and work with the state to improve communities’ health. The department of health in 2021 launched an initiative to make the plan better through community input, she said.
State health officials also lead a workgroup who coordinates over 200 organizations including the health councils, hospitals, federally qualified health centers and tribal communities, McGinnis Porter said.
Source New Mexico also asked the state health agency how it will create the State Health Improvement Plan without the health councils that could dissolve when federal funding runs out.
McGinnis Porter said the department of health does collaboration between the agency and health councils that promote equity and “address social determinants of health as they relate to COVID-19 health disparities among populations at higher risk and that are underserved.”
However, all of that work is at stake if the state government doesn’t fund it, according to Alarcón, and that the lack of state investment could harm community members and the health systems people need.
“I just can’t seem to get an understanding of why there’s a lack of recognition of the value of this work, given all of the public health priorities and crises in New Mexico,” Alarcón said.
PANDEMIC WON’T BE SOLVED BY IGNORING IT
In his first session after he was elected to the Legislature in 2019, Allison carried a bill that would have set aside $1 million for health councils. It got through one committee in the House.
In his fifth session earlier this year, Allison tried again and asked for $5.25 million.
Allison’s colleagues on the House Appropriations and Finance Committee voted to table the bill, preventing it from getting a vote by the full House of Representatives. He said he was “led to believe that I did not need to worry, that we were going to fund health councils through DOH.”
The head of the committee told reporters at the time it was a “temporary table,” and the funding could have been put into the state budget later in the session.
But that did not happen.
“All of a sudden, the tables turned on me,” Allison said. “This is my own committee, my fellow colleagues, and I told them I was very, very upset with the decision they had to give me on the last day, when they led me to believe all along that we were going to get funded.”
Over the summer, Allison said he and his allies decided, “You know what, we’re going to make them pay for it.” So the draft legislation will ask for $6.6 million in annual funding, one-and-a-half times the amount they asked for last time.
In a Legislative Finance Committee hearing scheduled in November, Allison expects “a final plea” from Alarcón and her team. Thomson is vice chair of the interim Legislative Health and Human Services Committee, and said she will have a chance to present her priorities to LFC this month.
He said the COVID-19 pandemic is still happening, “and we’re not going to solve it if we ignore it.”
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham extends and adds to controversial public health order on guns - By Nash Jones, KUNM News
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham Friday renewed her controversial executive order to combat gun violence.
The original order banned carrying guns in public in and around Albuquerque. Gun advocates filed a slew of lawsuits and a federal judge temporarily blocked the order’s implementation within days.
The Governor then narrowed the order to apply only to public parks and playgrounds where children are likely to be. The amended order has been challenged as well, and a hearing is expected next week. In the meantime, the order remains under a temporary restraining order.
Friday’s renewed order adds a provision for the state Department of Public Safety to organize gun buy-back events in Albuquerque, Española and Las Cruces over the next month.
Biden faces more criticism about the US-Mexico border, one of his biggest problems heading into 2024 - By Will Weissert And Adriana Gomez Licon Associated Press
The ad sounds like something out of the GOP 2024 playbook, trumpeting a senator's work with Republicans to crack down on the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the U.S., getting tough on Chinese interests helping smugglers, and noting how he "wrote a bill signed by Donald Trump to increase funding for Border Patrol."
It's actually a commercial for Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat facing a tough reelection fight that will help decide control of the Senate.
"Ohioans trust Sherrod Brown to keep us safe," says the narrator of the ad, sponsored by the Democrat-aligned Duty and Country PAC. His campaign declined to comment.
The message is one more indication of the political and security challenges the U.S.-Mexico border has presented for President Joe Biden. Some Democrats across the country are distancing themselves from the White House, and polls indicate widespread frustration with Biden's handling of immigration and the border, creating a major liability for the president's re-election next year.
The Biden administration this week took two actions seen by many as moving to the right on immigration.
The Department of Homeland Security waived environmental and other reviews to construct new portions of a border wall in South Texas after Biden pledged during the 2020 campaign that he would build "not another foot" of wall. And U.S. officials said they would resume deportations to Venezuela not long after the administration increased protected status for thousands of people from the country.
Both moves inflamed conservatives and liberals alike. Many Republicans accused Biden of being too late to adopt former President Donald Trump's ideas on a border wall, while liberals who oppose additional border restrictions accused the White House of betraying campaign pledges.
"My frustration has been that we are not addressing immigration in a holistic way as a country. We are depending on the president alone," said Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas, a Democrat who represents the border city of El Paso and is a national co-chair of the Biden re-election campaign. "We are treating people from different nationalities in a different way. And the pathways that have been created are being challenged in court consistently."
Biden has said his administration moved forward with the border wall because it was required by Congress during the Trump administration, even though he considers it ineffective. His reelection campaign pointed to Trump's record at the border, including his administration's practice of separating immigrant families as a deterrence measure and the temporary detention of children in warehouses in chain-link cells.
"MAGA Republicans are running on the legacy of Donald Trump's playbook of family separation, caging kids, and shouting 'border!' without any serious solutions," said Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for Biden's reelection campaign, referring to supporters of Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement.
Border crossings hit two-decade highs under Trump but fell during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, with immigration authorities expelling most border crossers using public health authority known as Title 42.
Upon taking office, Biden paused border wall construction and canceled the Trump administration's " Remain in Mexico " program, but kept expelling many people under Title 42 until this past May.
Still, border crossings are now skyrocketing, which some observers blame on his administration for creating the perception that the border was open. The White House counters that migration has surged across the Western Hemisphere due to regional challenges out of the administration's control.
Conservative media outlets often spotlight border crossings and blame Biden for creating what they say is a crisis. But Biden has taken criticism from many in his own party, including Democratic mayors and governors who want more help caring for newly arriving migrants.
Republican-led border states started busing thousands of immigrants to Democratic-led cities across the country, creating in many places a huge shortage of space that's led to makeshift shelters and camps.
In Chicago, O'Hare International Airport is now housing hundreds of migrants from babies to the elderly at a shuttle bus center. They sleep on cardboard pads on the floor and share airport bathrooms.
New York Mayor Eric Adams went to Mexico this week to implore would-be migrants not to come. He has accused the Biden administration of not providing enough money or resources for the city to process migrants, telling reporters this summer, "The president and the White House have failed New York City on this issue."
Polling suggests that Americans across the political spectrum — even some people sympathetic to immigration — are concerned.
A Marquette Law School poll of registered voters conducted in late September gave Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination, a 24-point advantage over Biden on handling immigration and border security issues — 52% to 28%.
The Republican focus on immigration and the border didn't stop Democrats from big victories in the 2018 midterms and Biden and Democrats beat expectations during last year's election as well, keeping the Senate and losing the House by a tiny margin to Republicans. But there were some troubling signs even then.
About six in 10 voters then said they disapproved of how Biden was handling the issue of border security, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping national survey of the electorate. Some 27% of Democrats disapproved of how Biden was handling the border, with one-third of Democrats who identify as moderate or conservative saying this was an issue where they disapproved of Biden's performance, according to VoteCast.
Border security was also a weak spot for Biden among independents, with 66% saying they disapproved.
Sixty-one percent of Democrats said they wanted stronger law enforcement at the border, as did two-thirds of Latino or Hispanic voters (65%).
Escobar, who is a leading Hispanic voice for the Biden campaign, said she is concerned that immigration could hurt the president's re-election efforts.
"There is going to be a tendency to blame the White House when in fact this has been a failure on Congress," she said. The last major immigration reform approved by Congress was in 1990.
Auri Lugo, a 31-year-old Venezuelan who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, said she thought resuming deportations was the right thing to do, adding that federal authorities should focus on expediting applications for family-based immigrant visas and the humanitarian parole program. That allows up to 30,000 people to enter the country from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Lugo, who arrived in the U.S. six years ago and has legal residency, was able to bring her 9-year-old son from Venezuela last year through the humanitarian parole program. But she's been unable to bring her mother, who was the boy's caregiver since he was 2 years old.
"I think it's a good thing that they are taking action on the matter," she said. "There are a lot of Venezuelans who are in shelters, who are not working. They do not have a work permit. So they are on the streets."
Despite his 2020 promises on the border, Biden has long been more moderate on the issue than some in his party. As a senator, he voted for legislation to expand U.S.-Mexico border fencing and supported authorizing federal seizure for the construction of new barriers.
He was also vice president to Barack Obama, whose administration set records for the number of people in the country illegally who were deported, earning the president the nickname " deporter-in-chief " from some immigrants' rights activists.
The Biden administration has nonetheless taken a number of steps to try and reduce the increasing numbers of migrants arriving at the U.S. border, including setting up processing centers for migrants to apply for U.S. asylum in Guatemala and Colombia, and creating more pathways for others to come legally.
"Republicans have run on anti-immigrant sentiments, fearmongering and xenophobia for several cycles. It hasn't worked for them before and it won't work for them this cycle either," said Pili Tobar, a former senior Biden White House official and Democratic strategist. "Immigration is a complex issue and there are no easy answers. This administration is working hard with the limited resources it has, to put in place balanced solutions."
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Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.
Some GOP candidates propose acts of war against Mexico to stop fentanyl. Experts say that won't work - By Adriana Gomez Licon Associated Press
Ron DeSantis wants suspected drug smugglers at the U.S.-Mexico border to be shot dead. Nikki Haley promises to send American special forces into Mexico. Vivek Ramaswamy has accused Mexico's leader of treating drug cartels as his "sugar daddy" and says that if he is elected president, "there will be a new daddy in town."
Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner for the 2024 nomination and long the person who has shaped his party's rhetoric on the border, has often blamed Mexico for problems in the United States and promises new uses of military force and covert action if he returns to the White House.
Many of the GOP presidential candidates say they would carry out potential acts of war against Mexico in response to the trafficking of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. More than 75,000 people in the U.S. died last year from overdoses of synthetic opioids, an annual figure more than 20 times higher than a decade ago.
The candidates' antagonism toward Mexico is welcomed by some families who have lost loved ones to fentanyl and have argued that Washington has not done enough to address the worst drug crisis in U.S. history. But analysts and nonpartisan experts warn that military force is not the answer and instead fuels the racism and xenophobia that undermine efforts to stop drug trafficking.
"You've got politicking on this side. And then on the Mexican side of the border, you've got a president who is turning a blind eye to what's going on in Mexico and who has completely gutted bilateral collaboration with the United States," said Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico's ambassador to the U.S. from 2007 to 2013. "That's a very combustible mixture."
Andrea Thomas' daughter died at age 32 after taking half of a counterfeit pill laced with fentanyl that looked like her prescription pills for abdominal pain. Thomas started the foundation Voices for Awareness in Grand Junction, Colorado, to raise the alarm about fentanyl.
Thomas says people she knows are interested in what the candidates are proposing and feel that President Joe Biden's administration has not properly responded to the crisis. In a letter to the presidential candidates, Thomas and an assembly of other groups urge the politicians to do "all that can be done" to stop the manufacturing and smuggling of the drug.
"This drug is like no drug we have ever seen before," she said. "We need some strong measures. We have no more time to waste."
Democrats also face immense political pressure on border issues heading into next year's election. The White House has funded national programs to reduce fentanyl overdoses and sanctioned Chinese companies blamed for importing the chemicals used to make the drug.
In a statement on Sunday, the White House said the administration imposed targeted sanctions as recently as last week and blamed Republicans in Congress for blocking a request for an additional $800 million to fight fentanyl trafficking, which includes money for law enforcement.
Mexico has failed to address its problem with fentanyl production and trafficking. Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador repeatedly denies his country is producing the synthetic opioid despite enormous evidence to the contrary.
Border agents seized nearly 13 tons (12,000 kilograms) of fentanyl at the U.S.-Mexico border between September 2022 and August, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
At the second GOP primary debate late last month, candidates reiterated that they would use military forces to go after drug gangs in Mexico.
"As commander in chief, I'm going to use the U.S. military to go after the Mexican drug cartels," said DeSantis, the Florida governor. He has promised that people suspected of smuggling drugs across the southern border would end up "stone cold dead." That raises the prospect of border agents being authorized to shoot people on sight before any investigation into whether those people were carrying drugs.
U.S. government data undercuts the claim that people seeking asylum and other border crossers are responsible for drug trafficking. About 90% of fentanyl seizures were made at official land crossings, not between crossings where people entered illegally. At a hearing in July, James Mandryck, a CBP deputy assistant commissioner, said 73% of fentanyl seizures at the border since the previous October were smuggling attempts carried out by U.S. citizens, with the rest being done by Mexican citizens.
A study published last year from U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies called Mexico the "principal source" of fentanyl, with cartels manufacturing the drug using precursor chemicals largely smuggled from China. But it noted that the crisis could not be resolved without curbing addiction in the U.S. that creates overwhelming demand for illegal opioids.
"The supply of illicit fentanyl cannot be permanently stopped through enforcement alone — only temporarily disrupted before another cartel, trafficking method, or analogue steps in to fill the market that addiction creates," said the report from the U.S. Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking.
Lopez Obrador took office in December 2018 campaigning with a motto of "hugs, not bullets," and for four years has shredded his predecessors' prosecution of the drug war. Experts agree that wide swaths of Mexico are under the de facto control of drug cartels. Lopez Obrador is already sensitive to what he considers U.S. "interference" in Mexico, suggesting that foreign agents were "spying" as they built a fentanyl smuggling case against members of the Sinaloa drug cartel announced earlier this year.
Lopez Obrador is defensive about U.S. criticism of his government's failure to stop the flow of fentanyl.
"There is a kind of competition to see who is the most ridiculous, who is most brazen to threaten Mexico, to blame Mexico," he said at a recent news conference. "They are nonsense."
Mexico will elect a new president next year, and the opposition candidate recently told Univision that she would accept more U.S. agents and help. But when asked about military operations, Xóchitl Gálvez said, "We have to get serious. We have to be smart with proposals that are clear and strong and not just to get votes."
Mexico today is also the top trading partner of the U.S. It has agreed to host agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal agents and to keep thousands of migrants rejected at the U.S. border under both the Trump and Biden administrations.
But the U.S. has invaded Mexican territory before and tried to overthrow governments through Latin America for its own policy goals.
In 1846, seeking to expand U.S. borders after supporting the annexation of Texas, President James K. Polk called on Congress to declare war with Mexico. The war ended with Mexico agreeing to cede 55% of its territory, including present-day states California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming.
In 1914, the U.S. invaded the port of Veracruz after the arrest of U.S. soldiers. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson deployed tens of thousands of troops in response to an attack by Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa in Columbus, New Mexico.
More recently, Trump promised to build a southern border wall to stop illegal immigration — and make Mexico pay for it. While he was president, the U.S. would build or refurbish about 500 miles of wall on the more than 2,000-mile border.
Mexico never paid for any sections of wall. And border crossings would repeatedly hit record highs throughout Trump's presidency and during Biden's term.
"We have to take what they say seriously," Tony Payan, director of the Center for the United States and Mexico at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy said about the Republican candidates. "But they are pretty much going off the rails. They are engaged in political theater, and they find Mexico an easy target."
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Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Mark Stevenson in Mexico City contributed to this report.