Bit by bit, as President Trump prepares to address the nation, the pieces are falling into place to show that the U.S. has a national security crisis because of its unguarded border.

Yes, we can expose the hypocrisy of House speaker Nancy Pelosi calling walls "immoral" while living behind them herself.  We can also point to the reality that terrorists have been getting through our unguarded U.S. border with big plans to harm us.  The left yells that "only" six (the ones they caught) is not good enough.  But all it takes is one.  And we can look to Thomas Lifson's piece today, describing how Mexico is taking measures to raise a wall on its unguarded southern border, site of the humiliating caravan bust-through late last year.

But now we have something very important from Axios, showing that the opioid epidemic is largely the work of legal and illegal drugs rolling in illicitly from abroad.  Part of that, a part big enough to see on Axios's chart here, is clearly the result of the U.S. unguarded borders.

Axios tries to downplay it in relative terms, given that many opioids slipping into the U.S. come by other means, but it doesn't shrink from the facts.  And with Axios calling it "the border's deadliest threat" – they inadvertently make a case for a wall.

Seventy thousand Americans died of opiate overdoses last year, a figure hailed as a leveling off, but 70,000 is a gargantuan number, signaling a real crisis.  Based on an estimate from the Axios chart of smuggled opiates coming in, about 10% of those opiates come through to the U.S. "between ports of entry" as the delicate term goes.  Ten percent of 70,000 is 7,000 deaths that can be attributed to an open border and illegal drugs getting in.  Those 7,000 deaths amount to more than two 9/11s.

Terrorists generally don't have that high a death toll, but opiates do.  That makes yet another argument for securing the U.S. border from drug-smugglers.  The case for a wall is growing.

Image credit: U.S. Department of State, public domain.