Spokane police chief tells Senate committee to invest in more technology to catch fentanyl being smuggled over the border

WASHINGTON – Spokane’s top cop told senators on Wednesday that law enforcement agencies need more tools and resources to stanch the flow of fentanyl and other opioid drugs to communities across the United States.

In testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Spokane Police Chief Kevin Hall, who spent most of his career near the U.S.-Mexico border as a member of the police department in Tucson, Arizona, said that most fentanyl enters the United States through legal ports of entry from Mexico. He called on the senators to pass a bill introduced by Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the top Democrat on the panel, aimed at improving the detection of drugs moving through transportation networks.

“Interdicting fentanyl requires strong partnerships between local, state, federal and tribal agencies,” Hall said. “We must enhance these collaborations with improved technology and resources.”

Cantwell pointed out that Washington and the nine other states with the highest numbers of opioid overdose deaths all have major intermodal hubs, like the ports of Seattle and Tacoma. She said organized crime syndicates in China and Mexico have developed sophisticated methods to meet demand for the highly addictive and dangerously potent drugs in the United States.

“The supply chain is clear: The Chinese Triad sells precursor chemicals to Mexican drug cartels, hidden on ships and in air cargoes, and cartels make fentanyl and smuggle it through the United States,” she said. “They hide fentanyl in personal vehicles, commercial trucks, buses, trains, planes and even on unmanned aerial vehicles.”

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, the committee’s Republican chair, began the hearing by criticizing the Biden administration’s border policies and asserting that the Coast Guard, which is under the committee’s jurisdiction, could have interdicted more illicit drugs had its cutters not been busy intercepting migrants trying to enter the country illegally.

The lead witness called by Cruz was Jena Ehlinger, a Texas woman whose 20-year-old son died after taking a counterfeit anti-anxiety pill that was laced with fentanyl. She praised a state law that allows Texas to charge someone who provides such a drug with murder and called for a more aggressive response to the opioid crisis.

“Senators, our country is at war,” Ehlinger said, “and we’re losing the war, as evidenced by fentanyl becoming the No. 1 killer in the United States for ages 18 to 45.”

Hall said the opioid epidemic is especially devastating for Native people, where it’s a relatively “invisible” crisis, partly because they are more isolated and have less trust in the government, emphasizing that he was speaking from his own experience as a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. In response to a question from Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., the police chief said that cooperation between tribal, state, local and federal law enforcement agencies is improving in Eastern Washington.

“We’re getting to a point where our relationships are getting stronger, where we understand this is a common issue that’s killing all of us,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re Native or Indigenous, if you’re from Spokane or if you’re from Omak, it’s still going to kill you. And so we all need to come together, and I’m starting to see that collaboration, that cooperation amongst the tribal folks, state, local and federal as well.”

Combating the opioid crisis, and the recent proliferation of fentanyl and its analogues in particular, is one of the few causes that has broad support among both parties in Congress, but Democrats and Republicans largely disagree on how to do so. Cantwell’s legislation, which was co-sponsored only by Democrats after she introduced it in 2024, would invest in developing and deploying technologies to detect drugs that are often smuggled in hidden compartments inside vehicles.