Heartbroken parents are pushing back on criticism of the president’s plans.
Sandra Martinez of Riverside, California, had been searching for her missing daughter for months when she received the call that all parents dread—the one informing them that they have outlived their child.
Martinez had filed numerous missing persons reports, desperate to know what had happened to Qarinna. She knew her daughter had been struggling with drug addiction but was still hoping for the best.
The truth was more horrible than she could have imagined.
“My daughter was human-trafficked,” Martinez told The Epoch Times. “She was drug muled. She was robbed right before she was killed.”
Martinez learned from a witness that someone had given her daughter a dose of fentanyl and methamphetamines before leaving her on a set of train tracks.
Too intoxicated to find her way to safety, her daughter was struck and killed by a train a half hour later.
Officials were unable to identify the body and it was three months before Martinez received word. By that point, it was too late to get one last look at her daughter.
“She was too far in decomposing,” she said. “They said I probably would have died if I would have seen her.”
Martinez’s family is one of thousands to have been torn apart in recent years by the rapid proliferation of illicit fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.
President Donald Trump has pointed to the crisis as a reason to impose tariffs on Canada, China, and Mexico for allowing such drugs and their precursor chemicals to be trafficked across the United States’ northern and southern borders.
On Feb. 1, Trump signed executive orders imposing 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico and a 10 percent tariff on goods from China.
The tariffs on China took effect on Feb. 4. The other two countries’ tariffs have been delayed 30 days.
Critics say tariffs will do more harm than good—that they will increase costs for consumers and undermine relations with three of the United States’ top trade partners. But Martinez and other parents who have lost children to illicit drugs are stepping forward to voice their support.
“Anything that Trump needs to do to put an end to this [opioid crisis], I think we have to do it,” Martinez said.
