1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Justice Against Sponsors of Illicit Fentanyl Act of 2023 . 2. Findings and purpose (a) Findings Congress finds the following: (1) International drug trafficking is a serious and deadly problem that threatens the vital interests of the United States and the safety and health of every community in the United States. (2) Transnational criminal organizations, cartels, and violent gangs are leading perpetrators of drug trafficking, often combining the manufacture and distribution of synthetic opioids with violence, human smuggling and trafficking, firearms trafficking, and public corruption, and pose a sustained threat to the homeland security of the United States. (3) Illicit fentanyl is primarily produced in clandestine laboratories and trafficked into the United States in powder and pill form, including fentanyl-laced counterfeit pills. (4) The People's Republic of China (hereinafter in this section referred to as China ) is the primary source country of fentanyl precursor chemicals used to manufacture the illicit fentanyl that is trafficked into the United States. (5) The Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking, established under section 7221 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 ( Public Law 116–92 ), reported in 2022 that China, which supplied 70 to 80 percent of fentanyl seized by Federal authorities between 2014 and 2019, has been surpassed by Mexico as the dominant source of illicit fentanyl in the United States. (6) Illicit fentanyl is primarily trafficked by land into the United States through legal ports of entry, as well as between such ports of entry, with some trafficking facilitated by domestic and foreign-based social media and encrypted communication applications. (7) In fiscal years 2021 and 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized over 24,000 pounds of fentanyl at ports of entry, a 200 percent increase from the amounts seized in fiscal years 2019 and 2020. (8) Deaths caused by the trafficking of illicit