Grand Canyon Times

Drug addiction and crime are on the rise throughout the United States and Arizona is no exception.

The state's violent crime rate increased by 6.5% in 2020 – slightly more than the national increase of 5% – according to The Center Square.

Marc Thiessen, a Washington Post opinion columnist, argued that President Joe Biden's open border policy is one of the reasons for this trend.

"One major reason we are facing a surge in crime is the disaster Biden unleashed on our southern border," Thiessen said in an opinion article. "Last year, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) seized enough fentanyl to provide a lethal dose to every American."

Biden said in recent months that he intends to repeal Title 42, a public health code invoked by the Trump administration during the COVID pandemic to prevent migrants from entering the United States. If this legislation is repealed, Border Patrol personnel anticipate a significant increase in illegal border crossings.

Repealing Title 42 will "open the floodgates for the cartels to traffic illegal drugs into the United States," Thiessen said. This will require U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers to shift resources and manpower away from drug enforcement and toward processing migrants.

U.S. District Judge Robert Summerhays of Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction on Friday that prohibits the Biden administration from repealing Title 42. Twenty-one states have filed lawsuits to prevent the repeal of the policy.

The DEA alerted Arizona residents that the number of fentanyl pills seized in the state almost doubled, from six million in 2020 to nearly 12 million in 2021, KOLD reported in February. Over 40% of the pills entering the country contain a fatal amount of fentanyl, according to an unnamed special agent from the DEA's Phoenix Division.

The New York Times reported a significant increase in fentanyl-related drug overdose fatalities. It said that "supplies of tainted pills, crudely pressed by Mexican cartels with chemicals from China and India, have escalated commensurately."

The DEA in 2021 recovered 20.4 million counterfeit pills; according to experts, this represents a tiny portion of the number of pills being manufactured. The number of counterfeit pills confiscated is sufficient to administer a deadly dosage of fentanyl to every American, according to a DEA press release.

Scientists believe approximately four out of 10 capsules contain fatal quantities of fentanyl.

There were over 108,000 drug-related deaths in the United States in 2021, according to The New York Times.

Arizona recorded 485 violent crimes per 100 000 people in 2020, marking the third-highest violent crime rate in the West and the ninth-highest in the U.S, The Center Square reported.

Over 10,760 criminal non-citizens were arrested during Fiscal Year 2021, according to CBP data. This is a 341% increase from the 2,438 people arrested in Fiscal Year 2020, when Pres. Donald Trump was in office. The current number of criminal non-citizen arrests so far for Fiscal Year 2022, which spans from October 1, 2021, to September 30, 2022, is 5,985.