Silver State Times

Rates of crime and drug abuse have been rising sharply in Nevada and across the nation in the last few years and a Washington Post opinion writer recently attributed the surge in U.S. crime to 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 Fiscal Year 2021 was 10,763 – a 341% increase from FY2020 when the total was only 2,438 and Trump was still president. The number of criminal noncitizen arrests for FY2022, which runs 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 during 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.

Pahrump Valley Times reports that according to the Nevada Overdose Surveillance April Statewide Report, drug-related emergency room visit rates increased by 12% from February to March of this year. Between the same time period, suspected opioid-related emergency visit rates rose even more, by 21%, and the opioid prescription rate per 100 residents jumped 15%. From January 2020 to June 2021, the rate of accidental drug overdose deaths among Nevadans rose by 20%.

The 20.4 million counterfeit pills seized by the DEA in 2021 alone represents 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. In the event that 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 in 2020, there were a total of 460 violent crimes reported for every 100,000 people in Nevada, higher than the national average of 399 per 100,000.