House Democrat told mother who lost daughter to fentanyl she’s being ‘used’ by GOP: ‘DON’T THINK FOR ME’

Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., told a mother who lost her daughter to fentanyl that she was being “used” by Republicans throughout a House Homeland Security listening to on Thursday.

Goldman’s remarks to Josephine Dunn, whose 26-year-old daughter Ashley lost her life to fentanyl-laced capsules, got here in the course of the committee’s listening to titled “Voices for the Victims: The Heartbreaking Reality of the Mayorkas Border Crisis.”

Dunn had been invited by Republicans to participate within the listening to and share the story of how she lost her daughter to fentanyl as Congress continues on with the impeachment proceedings towards Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Expressing his “sincere condolences” to Dunn for the lack of her daughter, Goldman stated that he needed to “apologize in some ways” to Dunn as a result of she was “being used as a fact witness for an impeachment investigation.”

BORDER PATROL SEIZED ENOUGH FENTANYL TO KILL ENTIRE US POPULATION THIS FISCAL YEAR

Expressing his “sincere condolences” to Dunn for the lack of her daughter, Goldman (left) stated that he needed to “apologize in some ways” to Dunn as a result of she was “being used as a fact witness for an impeachment investigation.” (House Homeland Security Committee)

“Obviously, given what your experience has been, you don’t have the background to understand what a high crime and misdemeanor is and how it relates to this,” he added in his remarks to Dunn.

Goldman’s remarks drew the ire of Dunn, who told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Friday that the lawmaker is “unaware about what my understanding, about what my education, what my experience is in any of those areas when it comes to misdemeanors or high crimes.”

“I have my opinions, and for him to assume that I want to just put more money into a system that has had plenty of money placed into it and is still broken is incorrect. Please don’t think for me. I have a brain, I can think and speak for myself,” she told the outlet.

During the listening to, Dunn grew visibly annoyed with Goldman as he tried to query her.

“You would agree, would you not, that it would help to stop the fentanyl trade and fentanyl trafficking from coming into this country if we had more law enforcement officers at the border and more resources and technology to stop the fentanyl from coming in?” he requested Dunn. “Do you agree with that?”

Dunn rejected Goldman’s premise, saying “Border Patrol is now being used to make sandwiches and to screen people and let them into our country. So I disagree with you.”

Moments later, Dunn added: “I would like the border patrol to be able to do the job that they were hired to do. Every border patrol officer that I have spoken to has told me that their hands are tied by this administration and Mr. Mayorkas. I’ve been to the border, sir, have you?”

Goldman responded that he was the one asking the questions on the listening to.

TEEN DRUG OVERDOSES HIT RECORD HIGH, DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY FENTANYL POISONING, SAYS NEW REPORT

Congressman Dan Goldman is pictured in Manhattan on Friday, February 24, 2023.  (Theodore Parisienne/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service by way of Getty Images)

Further highlighting the second in a put up to Facebook, Dunn wrote, “Pardon me sir, but you know nothing of my experience, my background or my understanding. Also, in all of my research, you have yet to travel once to the Southern Border of the United States. Is that why you avoided my question?”

“Are you unable to return to your constituency and explain your lack of understanding of the border, lack of experience at the border or was it something else? I would think you could have heard what I actually said. Not what you wanted me to say,” she added.

Last September, Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens introduced that brokers had seized over 2,700 lbs. of fentanyl as a part of the greater than 69,000 lbs of narcotics seized between ports of entry. The seizures additionally included 40,000 lbs. of marijuana, 13,000 lbs. of methamphetamine and 11,000 lbs. of cocaine. 

That quantity of fentanyl, which doesn’t embody the quantity seized at ports of entry, is greater than sufficient deadly doses to kill the whole inhabitants of the United States. While considerably extra is caught at ports of entry – with over 22,000 lbs caught on the ports of entry on the southern border this fiscal yr – the stat highlights the hazard of fentanyl shifting between the ports and probably previous overwhelmed brokers within the subject.

Opioids had been concerned in additional than 100,000 overdose deaths in 2022. Fentanyl is essentially the most outstanding opioid, which is produced primarily in Mexico, utilizing Chinese precursors, after which trafficked throughout the southern border. The drug is 50 to 100 instances stronger than morphine and is commonly reduce with different medication, that means that the consumer doesn’t know that they’re ingesting fentanyl.

A inventory photograph of fentanyl capsules disguised as Oxycodone. (Craig Kohlruss/The Fresno Bee/Tribune News Service by way of Getty Images)

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

While opioid deaths have risen sharply in recent times, the Biden administration has pointed to information suggesting that overdose numbers are slowing and has tied that flattening to its drug technique, which includes going after smugglers, rising expertise at ports of entry and offering further funding for therapy and prevention inside the U.S.

But the administration has confronted criticism from Republicans over its dealing with of the fentanyl disaster, significantly on the southern border, which they are saying has exacerbated the circulate of fentanyl into the U.S. Some Republicans, together with these on the 2024 path, have known as for navy motion in Mexico to take out drug labs run by the cartels.

Fox News’ Adam Shaw contributed to this report.