Scanners that spot smuggled fentanyl at the border sit unused because Congress hasn't provided the cash to install them

Customs and Border Protection has spent millions on the most up-to-date high-tech scanners to spot fentanyl crossing the southern U.S. border, but many scanners are sitting in warehouses unused because Congress hasn’t appropriated funds to install them, acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller told NBC News.

Miller gave NBC News a tour of a port of entry in Nogales, Arizona, where half of all fentanyl seized at the border is stopped on its way into the U.S. from Mexico.

Officers in Nogales have found fentanyl hidden inside crates of Coca-Cola, where bottles are painted black to look like liquid, sawed in half and filled with fentanyl pills; they’ve confiscated millions in fentanyl pills stuffed inside the water barrel of a commercial bus’ bathroom; they’ve even found fentanyl in cars carrying young children in the back in car seats. More than 95% of fentanyl seized at the border, Miller said, is actually brought into the U.S. in personal vehicles.

The new technology, known as Non-Intrusive Inspection, or NII, lets CBP X-ray a percentage of cars and trucks as they pass through the massive U-shaped screeners, which look something like car washes. Drivers don’t have to get out of their vehicles to be screened, which means traffic can keep flowing through border checkpoints with fewer interruptions.

But some of the equipment that has been purchased hasn’t yet been put into use, because Congress hasn’t allocated the funding needed to install it. The money to install the screeners was in the supplemental funding request Republicans blocked.

“We do have technology that’s in the warehouse that has been tested. But we need approximately $300 million [to] actually put the technology in the ground,” Miller said. “It’s extremely