In 2021, there were nearly 108,000 drug fatalities in the U.S. | Pixabay/Donald Clark
In 2021, there were nearly 108,000 drug fatalities in the U.S. | Pixabay/Donald Clark
Crime and drug abuse has been on the rise in North Carolina and across the nation, and a Washington Post opinion writer recently attributed the surge in U.S. crime to President Joe Biden's open border policy, citing the major drug problem the country has seen in the last year. It's predicted these problems will worsen if the Biden administration is successful in lifting Title 42.
Marc Thiessen, an opinion columnist for the Washington Post, says that America's surge in crime and drug abuse is fueled by Biden's open border policy. Citing DHS statistics, Thiessen says the flood of illegal migrants at the southern border over the past year has forced U.S. Customs and Border Protection to shift resources and manpower away from drug interdiction and toward processing migrants.
"One major reason we are facing a surge in crime is the disaster Biden unleashed on our southern border," Thiessen wrote.
Numbers show that noncitizen arrests in the U.S. have been on a sharp increase since 2020. According to criminal noncitizen statistics from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the number of criminal noncitizen arrests during the Fiscal Year 2021 was 10,763 – a 341% increase from FY2020 when the total was 2,438 and Donald Trump was still president. The number of criminal noncitizen arrests for FY2022, which runs from Oct. 1, 2021, to Sept. 30, 2022, is already at 5,985.
The New York Times recently reported on the drastic rise in fentanyl deaths from drug use, claiming "supplies of tainted pills, crudely pressed by Mexican cartels with chemicals from China and India, have escalated commensurately." According to the article, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) seized 20.4 million counterfeit pills in 2021, which experts say represent just a small fraction of those produced. Scientists estimate that about four in 10 pills contain lethal doses of fentanyl. In 2021, there were nearly 108,000 drug fatalities in the U.S.
"Overdose deaths from fentanyl coming across the border hit record levels in 2021, claiming a new victim every five minutes," Thiessen wrote.
Like the rest of the country, North Carolina has an opioid crisis. In 2021, nearly 4,000 people in the state died at the hands of drug overdoses – a 26% increase from 2020, according to WECT 6 News.
The 20.4 million counterfeit pills seized by the DEA in 2021 represent enough fentanyl to provide a lethal dose to every American, according to a DEA press release.
In recent months, Biden has expressed his intentions of lifting Title 42, a pandemic regulation that has been used to quickly expel migrants at the southern border. If this regulation is lifted, border patrol agents predict a major surge in illegal migrant border crossings, according to a CBP press release. On May 20, U.S. District Judge Robert R. Summerhays of Louisiana granted a preliminary injunction that stops the Biden administration from lifting Title 42. Twenty-one states sued to block the lifting of the regulation.
Thiessen says lifting Title 42 would "open the floodgates for the cartels to traffic illegal drugs into the United States," as more Border Patrol agents will have to be pulled to process and care for migrants, and away from the front line.
The Center Square reports that in 2020, North Carolina's violent crime rate of 419 incidents for every 100,000 people was higher than that of most other states. Seventy-five percent of the 44,451 violent offenses reported in the state during that year were aggravated assault cases. Rising by 35% year over year, the number of murders reported in North Carolina in 2020 totaled 852 – more than in New York, a state with nearly twice as many residents.
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