ST Louis Post Dispatch–

United States Border Patrol Patrol agents seized more than 3,500 pounds of opioids between 2013 and 2017, mostly near the southern border of the United States, and seizures of fentanyl by this federal agency were up by almost 72 percent in a single year, according to a new report by investigators for Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.

The report is the latest in a series on the proliferation of opioid use by McCaskill, D-Mo., who is the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Earlier this month, McCaskill reported that another federal agency, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, seized almost 1,400 pounds of illicit fentanyl in 2017, double that of the year before.

McCaskill’s new report on the Border Patrol found that agents there also “play an important role in stopping opioids,” a synopsis of the new report says.

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