Gov. Greg Abbott has attributed a rising number of apprehensions by Border Patrol agents and seizures of the drug fentanyl as the reasons why his office plans to build a wall at the Texas-Mexico border. But immigration and drug treatment experts say Abbott has oversimplified and mischaracterized the numbers. 

"The idea that the border was somehow quiet before President Biden took office is completely false," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an analyst with the American Immigration Council, a Washington, D.C., group that advocates for immigrants. He added that increased apprehensions of both migrants and drugs mean that the border is more secure now than 20 years ago when there were fewer border agents and less sophisticated technology protecting the border.

Jessica Bolter, an associate policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute nonpartisan think tank said the current immigration debate centers on apprehension numbers. But it doesn't take into account that many migrants are apprehended repeatedly. Therefore, the number of apprehensions doesn't reflect the number of individuals attempting to cross the border. 

Fentanyl seizures have been increasing along the southwest border since at least the 2016 fiscal year, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment. But Daniel Ciccarone, a professor of family community medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, said that fentanyl is mostly seized at ports of entry and, in some cases, through the U.S. Postal Service.

“So the wall is useless,” he said, adding that the U.S. “spends a lot of money trying to stop the flow of drugs” and while “it’s not a complete waste of money, it doesn’t work as well as we’d like to.”