Sen. Chuck Schumer on Sunday called for $5 million in federal funds to help stop international drug dealers from smuggling fentanyl – a potent synthetic opioid — into the US through JFK Airport.

The Senate minority leader said he wants at least a third of the $16 million President Trump has requested to enhance opioid detection equipment across the country allocated to JFK.

“A lot of the Chinese fentanyl is sent through the mail. And where does most of it arrive? At the largest international mail-processing airport in the country — at Kennedy,” the New York Democrat said at a press conference outside a Manhattan post office.

“Then if it’s not detected it’s sent to various post offices where the drug dealers pick it up, lace the pills — the heroin, the other things — with deadly fentanyl. And you know the horror of the results,” he added.

Schumer said that “last year more young people died of fentanyl than car accidents or anything else.”

He added: “So the bottom line is we’ve got to put a stamp ‘return to sender’ when deadly fentanyl arrives at JFK.”

“JFK should be our firewall in preventing fentanyl from being sent to the whole New York metropolitan area and the whole Northeast,” Schumer said.

JFK needs more personnel, drug-sniffing dogs and handheld opioid detectors, the senator said.

“We can’t do this too soon. Every day there’s more fentanyl coming in,” he said.

Last week, when China placed fentanyl on its list of controlled substances, calls to address the opioid crisis resumed as lawmakers released a bill that aims to curb the flow of the illegal drugs into the US.

Schumer has said a Senate measure stands a good chance of becoming law, according to Roll Call.

The new measure offered by a bipartisan group led by Schumer and Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton would authorize the Trump administration to impose sanctions on China to pressure the country into cracking down on exports of fentanyl.

The bill would authorize an additional $600 million for intelligence and law enforcement authorities to identify fentanyl producers and traffickers, as well as their financial networks.

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