Tester Asks Congress to Fund Install of Fentanyl Scanners

Instead of being deployed to the southern border to help combat drug smuggling, millions of dollars in fentanyl scanners are sitting idle. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said he blames Republicans for that and is calling on congressional appropriators to approve the money needed to install the machines.

According to Tester, Republicans killed the Senate-negotiated border security bill earlier this year, so they should now support funding to get the machines up and running.

“Many of these scanners are currently sitting in warehouses unused, because Sen. Mitch McConnell and politicians in Washington blocked bipartisan border security legislation that would have appropriated funds to install them,” Tester said Friday in a letter to the House and Senate appropriations committees.

The majority of fentanyl that Customs and Border Protection seizes at the southern border enters the U.S. at legal ports of entry in personal vehicles.

Acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller told NBC News that large fentanyl scanners are sitting unused because Congress hasn’t provided the funding to install them.

In his letter, Tester explained why the installation funding is necessary.

“These scanners allow Customs and Border Protection agents to scan vehicles and cargo in order to detect fentanyl and other dangerous contraband that criminals are trying to smuggle into our country,” he wrote.

Republican lawmakers also have concerns about how CBP has used the funding it’s received for border screening since 2018.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green, R-Tenn., asked the Government Accountability Office in October to conduct a review of how the agency has used the $1.9 billion in enhanced screening funds allocated to it over the past six years.

A spokesperson for the GAO told NBC News the review is underway.

Cornyn and Green reportedly complained in their letter that CBP has received nearly $2 billion to increase scanning, yet only 2% of personal vehicles are scanned.

Miller told NBC that CBP is scanning less than 5% of personal vehicles and said the agency’s target by the end of 2025 is to be able to scan 40%. He said he needs another $200 million or $300 million to install the equipment the agency purchased.

Scanning 100% of the vehicles crossing the border would not be practical due to traffic volumes, Miller said. One million people cross the U.S.-Mexico border every day and “legitimate trade and travel” would be “shut down” if every vehicle were scanned, he said.

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