There is too much money and too much political power riding on the twin goals of abolishing immigration enforcement and abolishing incarceration for drug and most other violent offenses. As such, the political elites keep perpetuating the big lie that prescription painkillers are responsible for the drug crisis and not open borders, sanctuary cities, and release from jail of drug traffickers. That’s why we are seeing endless lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies. However, a new study of Massachusetts drug overdose deaths demonstrates once again that this is all an illicit drug trafficking crisis and not a prescription problem.

According to a new study of drug deaths in the Bay State by Alexander Walley, an associate professor of medicine at Boston University, just 16.8 percent of opioid-related deaths between 2013 and 2015 involved prescription opioids, and only 1.3 percent of the decedents had valid prescriptions. Walley and his team looked at 2,916 opioid-related deaths in Massachusetts over those three years and published their findings in the journal Public Health Reports.

Overall, 61.4 percent had heroin and 45.3 percent had fentanyl detected in postmortem toxicology reports. But the real kicker is that just 1.3 percent had active, valid prescriptions for each drug found in their bodies. What this demonstrates is that the chronic pain or post-surgery patients who are getting valid prescriptions do not overdose on these drugs. It’s drug addicts who use illicit drugs. Also, 32 percent of those with traces of prescription drugs in their toxicology included methadone, which is prescribed to those addicts involved in drug treatment, not legitimate pain patients. The crisis is almost exclusively driven by illicit drugs, and even when it involves prescription drugs, they are usually abused by addicts who are already abusing illicit drugs and are often accessing the pain medicine on the black market, the same way they do heroin.

However, the role of prescription painkillers in the crisis is even more miniscule than this study indicates. The universe of this study only included opioid-related deaths – illicit (heroin and street fentanyl) or prescription (oxycodone, etc.) As I’ve noted before, cocaine and meth, which are psychostimulants, not opioids, have been an increasingly problematic part of this crisis since the time period of this study ended in 2015. According to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, 39 percent of those who died of drug overdoses in the first quarter of this year had cocaine in their toxicology. Obviously, 100 percent of those fatalities are from illicit drugs, which would make the prescription share of the pie even smaller. In Massachusetts, deaths due to cocaine and benzodiazepines (sleeping pills), in particular, are skyrocketing.

So, if the crisis is not due to prescriptions, what is the culprit?

Massachusetts is a state that is friendlier to criminal alien drug networks than perhaps any other state besides California. State judges have declared the entire state a sanctuary. They have done everything possible to thwart enforcement of drug laws both for American defendants and illegal aliens. It is a state where weak-on-crime and weak-on-drugs policies are merging with sanctuary policies to allow cartel contractors to operate lucrative networks in plain sight that are poisoning the entirety of New England.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., rose to new heights of outrage Thursday, accusing America of committing "atrocities" on the southern border after yet another migrant child died in U.S. custody.

Omar shared the story of a 10-year-old girl with a history of congenital heart defects who made the dangerous journey from El Salvador to the United States. A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human services said the girl arrived in a "medically fragile" state and died in U.S. custody after complications from surgery.

Omar blamed America for her death and the deaths of other migrant children in U.S. custody.

This narrative of blaming America first for the border crisis is a popular line of attack on the Trump administration from the Left. Another House Democrat, Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Ill., recently accused the administration of intentionally killing migrant children, saying during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing that these deaths were "more than a question of resources."

"Congress has been more than willing to provide resources and to work with you to address the security and humanitarian concerns," Underwood said. "But at this point, with five kids that have died, 5,000 separated from their families, I feel like, and the evidence is really clear, that this is intentional. It's intentional. It's a policy choice being made on purpose by this administration, and it's cruel and inhumane."

After Underwood's comments were criticized by Republicans, she was backed up by yet another leftist, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who went even further and accused the United States of trafficking children.

The rhetoric coming from these Democrats is divorced from any semblance of fact or reality. Just a few months ago, when President Trump asked Congress to secure the border and prevent tragedies like this, Democrats and their media allies were denying that any sort of crisis existed at all. House Democrats have repeatedly refused to give the Trump administration the funding necessary to secure the border and process the unprecedented flow of migrants attracted to the U.S. by weak border laws and the promise of amnesty. Now the Left is opportunistically using the deaths of children to attack Trump for not doing enough to solve a crisis Congress refuses to address.

The accusation that the United States government is committing "atrocities" like human trafficking is outrageous on its face. If you bother to read the story Omar shared, you'll find that the poor child was given medical care in the United States that she was otherwise unable to obtain traveling across Central America. The reality is that the American government tried to save that girl's life. It's the transnational cartels that are trafficking human beings and importing drugs and horrific acts of violence into the United States, harming both migrants and Americans.

President Trump is trying to save migrant lives and American lives by securing the border, and Democrats are wasting time in Congress investigating bogus obstruction of justice claims and ignoring real issues. Americans ought to turn the question on Omar and the other Democrats. How many migrant children must die before the Democratic majority appropriates funds that Border Patrol, DHS, and President Trump say they need to secure the border? How many Americans must die at the hands of illegal immigrant criminals before Democrats address our border crisis?