; Whereas U.S. Customs and Border Protection operational statistics showed fentanyl seizures at the United States southern border increased 66.86 percent in January 2023, compared to January 2022, with over a 907 percent increase from January 2020; Whereas U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported an approximately 207 percent increase in the amount of illicit fentanyl seized at the southwest border since fiscal year 2020, and the Drug Enforcement Administration reported the seizure of 379,000,000 potentially deadly doses of fentanyl in 2022; Whereas the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a record of 107,000 overdose deaths in the United States in 2022, with more than 71,400 (66.5 percent) of those attributed to synthetic opioids, a substantial amount of which are illicitly produced in Mexico using precursor chemicals imported from the People’s Republic of China and mixed or reshipped by the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) drug cartels; Whereas reports from the United States Northern Command indicate that Mexican cartels now control 30 to 35 percent of Mexican territory, with Mexico’s midterm elections in June 2021 being the most violent on record driven by cartel violence and attempts to thwart the democratic process; Whereas more than 80 politicians were killed prior to the June 2021 midterm elections in Mexico, with the Mexican cartels claiming responsibility for the killings of at least 35 candidates, according to several reports; Whereas, according to the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors of the Brookings Institution, Mexico registered almost 34,000 murders in 2022 near an all-time high, representing 27 murders per 100,000 and primarily attributable to ties related to transnational criminal organizations, while the effective prosecution rate for homicides remains around 2 percent