Two Mexican cartels have foot soldiers in every U.S. state and “pose the greatest criminal drug threat the United States has ever faced,” a top Drug Enforcement Administration official told a House panel Wednesday as lawmakers debated ways to stop the fentanyl crisis killing tens of thousands of Americans per year.

The Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel control the supply chain for illicit fentanyl by obtaining precursor chemicals from China. They turn the chemicals into finished fentanyl at clandestine labs and press it into fake prescription pills, ship it as powder and cut it with drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine, said Jon C. DeLena, the DEA’s associate administrator for business operations.

“These ruthless, violent criminal organizations have associates, facilitators and brokers in all 50 states as well as in more than 40 countries around the world,” Mr. DeLena told the health subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “I have seen firsthand what the Mexican cartels have done to our great country. The cartels are destroying families and communities with callous indifference and greed.”

Overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids have soared from nearly 10,000 in 2015 and 20,000 in 2016 — when fentanyl started to infiltrate the U.S. drug supply — to 56,000 in 2020 and more than 70,000 in 2021, according to the most recent federal figures available based on death certificates.