Great Lakes Wire

President Joe Biden seeks to loosen immigration restrictions amid rising crime rates and drug use. Drug use and crime have increased across the United States and that includes Michigan.

A Washington Post opinion writer recently blamed the increase in crime on Biden's border policy.

"One major reason we are facing a surge in crime is the disaster Biden unleashed on our southern border," Washington Post writer, Marc Thiessen, stated in an article April 20.

The New York Times recently expressed concern about narcotics from Mexico entering the United States.

"Supplies of tainted pills, crudely pressed by Mexican cartels with chemicals from China and India, have escalated commensurately," according to a report from the NYT.

Thiessen claims the increase in crime and drug use is driven by Biden's border policy. He cites Department of Homeland Security statistics and claims the increase in illegal migrants at the southern border over the past year has forced U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to move money and manpower toward processing migrants and away from drug interdiction.

According to criminal noncitizen statistics from CBP, the number of criminal noncitizen arrests during fiscal year 2021 was 10,763, a 341% increase from FY 2020 when the amount was just 2,438.

The number of criminal noncitizen arrests for FY 2022--which runs Oct. 1, 2021, to Sept. 30, 2022-- is already at 5,985, according to CBP.

In response to the drug overdoses over the past two years, most Michigan pharmacies offer the overdose-fighting drug naloxone without a prescription, according to a report from the University of Michigan. In 2020, more Michiganders died from drug overdoses than any previous year.

The 20.4 million counterfeit pills seized by the Drug Enforcement Agency in 2021 represent enough fentanyl to provide a deadly dose to each American, according to a December 2021 press release. In recent months, Biden has expressed his plan to end Title 42, a COVID-19 regulation that has been used to rapidly expel migrants at the southern border. If this regulation ends, border patrol agents predict a significant increase in illegal migrant border crossings.

U.S. District Judge Robert R. Summerhays of Louisiana granted a preliminary injunction May 20 that prevents the Biden administration from ending Title 42. Twenty-one states sued to block the repeal of the legislation: the Washington Post reported.

Crime has increased during this period in Michigan as well. In 2020, there were 478 violent crimes for every 100,000 people in Michigan -- representing the third highest violent crime rate in the Midwest and 10th highest nationwide, according to a report from the Center Square website. From 2019 to 2020, the violent crime rate in the state increased by 9.3%, nearly double the national increase of 5%. Violence in Michigan tends to be highly concentrated in certain cities, such as the Detroit metro area, where there were 1,088 violent crimes for every 100,000 people in 2020.