U.S. Customs and Border Protection has seized a shipment of the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl hidden in pill bottles that was strong enough to potentially provide lethal doses to tens of thousands of people, the agency said.

Related video above: Fentanyl overdose survivor warns others: 'I hit rock bottom, and I hit it hard'

CBP officers in Louisville, Kentucky, detained a shipment Thursday that arrived from India and was manifested as medicine, the agency said. Inspecting officers found five pill bottles, and the pills tested positive for fentanyl properties, CBP said.

The shipment was headed for a residence in Brampton, Ontario, Canada, the agency added.

A CBP spokesman said that a total of 100.4 grams of fentanyl was seized. CBP described the amount as "enough to kill 50,200 people" and with a "street value of at least $15,000." The Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that two milligrams of fentanyl can potentially be lethal, depending on a person's size, tolerance and past usage.

"Even though this shipment may seem like a very small amount, remember 2 milligrams of this stuff is lethal," said Thomas Mahn, the Louisville Port director. "This seizure showcases the excellent work our officers do every day. This is a dangerous opioid, and our officers were able to prevent this deadly drug from reaching its destination."

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is stronger and faster-acting than natural opiates like heroin.

The increased use of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids has led to a large surge in overdose deaths in the U.S. in the last decade. In 2021, nearly 108,000 people died of drug overdoses－nearly double the number of overdoses in 2016－and about two-thirds of those deaths involved fentanyl or another synthetic opioid, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The U.S. government seized enough fentanyl in 2021 to give every American a lethal dose, DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said last year.

ERLANGER, Ky. —

Cincinnati's Custom and Border Protection seized 601 pieces of counterfeit jewelry on Monday.

Officials said the items were traveling from Hong Kong to a residence in Laredo, Texas.

Had the jewelry been real, the suggested retail price would have been $1.5 million, said officials.

The counterfeit jewelry included earrings and bracelets from numerous designers.

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CHICAGO — While public health officials continue to wrestle with a global pandemic, crooks have been using the crisis as an opportunity to make a profit. Vendors are peddling fake vaccine cards on the dark web and consumers are ordering purported therapeutic drugs from dubious international sources.

Tens of millions of packages come through nine international mailing facilities around the United States annually. It’s a 24-hour operation.

Each year, Customs and Border Protection officers inspect and screen tens of million parcels to ensure they comply with state and federal law.

And since the beginning of the pandemic, they’ve been busy.

“We were seizing unapproved medications coming from China that were manufactured in clandestine labs,” said Christopher Macko, a supervisory officer with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

He says his officers have been intercepting everything from fake PPE and COVID-19 testing kits to drugs and phony vaccine cards.

“We were seeing hundreds and thousands of packages coming from unknown lands, basically to the consumer, in the United States,” he said.

Between January of last year and the end of July this year, the agency seized nearly 40 million counterfeit face masks, 187,000 FDA-prohibited COVID-19 test kits, and approximately 40,000 tablets of unapproved chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine.

“This is an open market, an unregulated market, also an illegal market,” said Ryan Linder, an emerging threats expert with Check Point Research.

They’ve been monitoring activity associated with pandemic-related fraud, cyber threats, and illegal commerce—some of it on the dark web.

“We must increase vaccination among the unvaccinated with new vaccination requirements,” said President Biden on Sept. 9.

Linder says the day after President Biden announced an emergency vaccine mandate for American workers, online activity spiked.

“The cost of these of these illegal cards on these platforms doubled overnight,” said Linder. “But more disturbingly, the number of sellers increased by about ten times.”

Earlier this month, Customs and Border Patrol seized two consignments destined for Texas that contained counterfeit vaccination cards from China. They also found shipments from China and Mexico headed to Atlanta, St. Louis and Minnesota that contained the controversial drugs ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

Linder warns that purchasing these kinds of items not only poses a risk to public health but to your personal information.

“You have no idea where that personal information ends up, so you may get a fake vaccine card. Your data might be sold on the dark web at great profit to these bad actors,” he said.

As the public remains sharply divided over vaccine mandates and controversial therapeutics, Linder says as long as people are willing to buy, the illegal imports won’t disappear.

“They want to have what they want to enjoy their lives and make money and earn a living, but they don't want a vaccine,” he said. “That population, I think, will be fixed for a very long time and therefore there will be a demand that's increasing with each one of these mandates.”

The simple warning to contraband shoppers he says is buyer beware.

WASHINGTON —

White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to provide a specific date for when the media will get access to Border Patrol facilities temporarily holding thousands of migrant children seeking to live in the United States, but said Sunday the Biden administration was committed to transparency and "we're working to get that done as soon as we can."

More than 16,000 unaccompanied children were in government custody as of Thursday, including about 5,000 in substandard Customs and Border Protection facilities.

Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been calling on the administration to open the facilities to the cameras, asserting that the current policy is designed to keep the public from "fully realizing" what is happening at the border.

Republican officials are also blaming the Biden administration for actions they say are leading more people from Central America to seek entry into the United States. "It's not a crisis, it's a complete loss of sovereignty down there," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said.

Graham recently visited the border and said he saw a facility designed to hold 80 children with about 1,000 in it. He called on the administration to turn away every unaccompanied minor after testing them for "human trafficking abuses."

"If you don't, we'll have 150,000 a month by this summer," Graham said Sunday.

U.S. authorities reported encounters with more than 100,000 migrants on the southern border in February, the highest since a four-month streak in 2019.

Encounters have averaged about 5,000 people per day throughout March, which would be about a 50% increase over February if those figures hold for the entire month.

White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said the surge was cyclical.

"They're not the result of one administration's policies or another administration's policies. They're the result of, for example, weather disasters in the region. They're the result of people fleeing poverty and violence," Bedingfield said. "So we saw spikes in 2014. We saw them in 2019 when the Trump administration had perhaps the cruelest imaginable policies in place, family separation to try to deter people from coming, and they still came."

The Biden administration continued to emphasize on the Sunday talk shows that the U.S.-Mexico border "remains closed" and that the majority of adults are being turned away. But Psaki said the administration was not going to force children to go back on a treacherous journey.

"They are fleeing challenging economic circumstances, hurricanes, prosecution in some scenarios," she said. "It does not mean that they get to stay in the United States. It means their cases are adjudicated and we want to treat them humanely, make sure they are in a safe place while their cases are adjudicated. That's what we're talking about here."

Former President Donald Trump expanded and fortified border walls while championing "zero tolerance" policies that made it more difficult to seek U.S. asylum and led to some immigrant parents being separated from their children.

Under federal law, children arriving at the border without parents should be transferred within three days from U.S. Border Patrol custody to long-term facilities run by the U.S. Health and Human Services until they can be released to family members or sponsors.

Psaki said the administration is committed to transparency and providing access to those temporary Border Patrol facilities as soon as it can.

"We are mindful of the fact that we are in the middle of a pandemic. We want to keep these kids safe, keep the staff safe," Psaki said.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called on the president to let the media accompany him to a temporary detention facility in Dallas on Monday.

"I again urge you to stop denying reality, confront the consequences of your policies, and allow the media access to these facilities," Cruz wrote in a letter.

Psaki and Graham spoke on "Fox News Sunday," while Bedingfield was interviewed on ABC's "This Week."

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — As the U.S. grapples with a surge in drug overdoses linked to synthetic opioids, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has launched an initiative to disrupt the fentanyl supply chain.

“Never before in the past have we said, 'taking this drug will not hurt you. It will kill you.' In 2021, that’s where we are," said John Callery, Special Agent in Charge of the DEA San Diego Field Division. "Hence, 'Wave Breaker' – we have to get people educated. We have to get our local partners on board, and our federal partners, to understand exactly where we are.”

Callery has spent the last 29 years decoding the ever-changing playbooks of drug cartels.

“It doesn’t change every decade; it changes every two or three years," said Callery. "The only difference is the drugs on the streets of the United States right now are, by far, the deadliest they’ve ever been.”

From San Diego to New York, agents in 11 cities are working closely together, synthesizing enforcement efforts targeting the Sinaloa Cartel. Divisions participating in Project Wave Breaker are credited with 85% of all synthetic opioids seized by the DEA in 2020.

“Sinaloa, think of Chapo, Chapo Guzmán and his kids, Mayo Zambada. That’s Sinaloa Cartel. They have kind of garnered the market on fentanyl, as we speak, but you’ll certainly see that change in the next year to three years.”

Project Wave Breaker will direct interdiction, enforcement, and outreach efforts to the San Diego Field Division.

“You can call it OxyContin, Norco. You can call it whatever you want. At the end of the day, it’s heroin," said Special Agent Callery.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is approximately 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. Callery says the surge in demand for prescription opioids fueled the deadly flow of fentanyl into the U.S.

“If you dose it right, it’s a fantastic heroin high. But If you’re off by a microgram, you’re going to die."

He says 70 to 80 percent of all fentanyl in the U.S. first crosses the southern California border.

“The cartels responded to that demand, for sure," said Ev Meade, a professor of practice at the Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego.

A historian of Mexico, Meade is documenting the violence in places like Sinaloa.

“This fentanyl stuff is lethal. It's a public health emergency in both countries," said Meade. “But it’s also not like this was something that the Mexican cartels dreamed up and wanted to sell to the United States."

He says pharmaceutical companies laid the groundwork for the crisis, years before most Americans knew what fentanyl was.

"Who’s responsible? I think we all know who’s responsible when we think about it with the right hat on. It's the drug companies and U.S. physicians who created the opioid crisis; over-prescription and over-sale of these drugs," said Meade.

And Meade says much of the fentanyl supply has been imported into Mexico from countries like China.

"Mexico is a transit country, and the Mexican cartels are really good at that. They have, obviously, a lot of experience. They have diverse supply chains," said Meade.

But Special Agent Callery says the landscape is shifting.

“They [China] closed many, many of those fentanyl labs. Unfortunately, it’s still ongoing illicitly. But the scary part is something we predicted three, four years ago," said Callery. "Once that supply chain gets blocked, or it stops, the cartels are not going to stop. They’ve started creating their own fentanyl labs in Mexico. They've started creating their own chemicals required for fentanyl in Mexico. So sooner or later, they won't need that connection to Asia anymore. They'll be able to produce on their own."

Wave Breaker divisions are also expanding outreach to the community.

"It's not just focusing on, 'let’s seize OxyContin, let's seize fentanyl.' It's getting the communities involved. It's educating communities. DEA's, now that COVID is lifting a little bit, we're able to get back out to schools, we're able to get back out to medical schools, to pharmacists, to conventions, and talk to people about what's been going on in the last year-and-a-half when everything's kind of been on hold," said Callery.

“You can’t do a law enforcement approach without a public health approach – they’ve got to go hand-in-hand," said Meade. “You know, DARE is a stupid program, frankly. It never showed good results. But we need DARE for fentanyl. We need public information that says, you could use this once and die."

While the pandemic strained cartel operations in early 2020, Callery says they were able to adapt within months.

He says their division has discovered several tunnels since January 2020, but there's likely more they aren't aware of.

"It's that cat and mouse game that we’ve been playing since the 50s in the narcotics war."

But Callery says the DEA is also adjusting its playbook.

“We are putting people in jail who’ve provided fentanyl to addicts, and we’re charging them with homicide because they knew they were giving them a drug that was very deadly," said Callery.

Created in 2018, the Narcotics Task Force Team 10 is a multi-agency team housed by DEA to address drug overdose deaths in San Diego. Agencies on Team 10 include DEA, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, California Department of Healthcare Services, and San Diego Police Department.

"That's non-traditional. That's not something DEA has done in the past," said Callery. "It’s something we’re doing here because the community needs it."