Media

Mother Who Lost Sons To Fentanyl Fires Back At Democrats Accusing Her Of ‘Fearmongering’

[Screenshot/Rumble/Fox News]

Nicole Silverio Media Reporter
Font Size:

A mother who lost two sons to fentanyl fired back at Democrats who accused her of “fearmongering” about the U.S.-Mexico border.

Rebecca Kiessling lost her two sons, 20-year-old Caleb and 18-year-old Kyler, to fentanyl poisoning on July 29, 2020, after the boys ingested a “fake Percocet” in a hotel room. She testified on Tuesday in front of the Border Security and Enforcement Subcommittee investigating the ongoing crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, the entry point for most of the country’s fentanyl.

“I was hoping that there would be some change. We need to cut it off at the source, at the border,” Kiessling told Fox News anchor Brian Kilmeade on Wednesday. “We need to have border control. We don’t. And it was really disheartening to see the Democrats saying that there’s fear-mongering going on. Like, really? Over 110,000 are dying every year now from drug deaths in America. I’m fear-mongering? We have reason to be afraid, we’re at war. Do something.”

Fentanyl is a synthetic drug that is up to 50 times more powerful than heroin and is the leading source of drug deaths in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (RELATED: FBI Probes Snapchat Over Teen Fentanyl Deaths) 

Kiessling emotionally testified Tuesday that the federal government has failed to take action on the fentanyl crisis that has caused a spike in overdose deaths across the nation.

“If we had Chinese troops lining up along our southern border with weapons aimed at our people, with weapons of mass destruction aimed at our cities, you damn well know you would do something about it,” Kiessling testified. “We have a weather balloon from China going across our country. Nobody died, and everybody’s freaking out about it. But 100,000 die every year, and nothing’s being done. Not enough is being done, numbers are going up, not down, and you talk about children being taken away from their parents.”

Democrats have repeatedly accused congressional Republicans and others of fear-mongering over the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. Democratic Pennsylvania Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon accused Republicans of attempting to “conflate the issues of migrants seeking asylum through our legal processes with the very real scourge of fentanyl trafficking” following a Feb. 1 hearing on the border.