We don’t understand the U.S.-Mexico border.

Yes, we know illegal crossings have exceeded record highs the past two years, but that hardly begins to describe the situation.

To really understand it, we first have to pull back.

Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels would seem the last person to do that. For four decades he has seen the border up close, with its “death,” “murder,” “drug poisoning” and attacks on “law enforcement officials,” he recently told members of Congress.

But today is different.

The border “is in the worst shape I’ve ever seen it in my 40-year career,” he said.

Now Dannels is helping American leaders see the bigger picture.

“Our southern border has become the largest crime scene in the country,” he told members of the House Committee on Natural Resources.

What is happening there doesn’t end there, he said. This is also about our northern border and Mexico and Central America and Europe and the major cities in America.

“We are not dealing with an immigration issue,” he said. “We are dealing with an organized crime issue.”

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is sounding the same alarm in its newly released National Drug Threat Assessment 2024.

The Sinaloa Cartel and the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, two of the largest and most dangerous criminal syndicates in the world, have taken control of “clandestine drug production sites and transportation routes inside Mexico and smuggling corridors into the United States,” it reports.

They “maintain large network ‘hubs’ in U.S. cities along the Southwest Border and other key locations across the United States,” the DEA reports.

They are “global criminal enterprises” that have “developed global supply chain networks,” and now they are in league with Chinese firms to bring together the equipment and precursor chemicals to manufacture synthetic opioids in clandestine Mexican labs, the report says.

“Together, the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels have caused the worst drug crisis in U.S. history. They dictate the flow of nearly all illicit drugs into the United States, and their dominance over the synthetic drug trade in particular is evident in the relentless stream of illicit fentanyl and methamphetamine crossing the border toward U.S. markets.”

In 2014, there were virtually zero fentanyl-related overdose........

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