In January Donald Trump killed the toughest anti-immigration, bi-partisan bill in years, ready to be passed in Congress, to help stop America’s devastating opioid epidemic.
He called Republicans in Congress, threatening to smear any who voted for the bill, so he could claim Biden was doing nothing about the border crisis.
When the bill failed due to the lack of Republican votes “an average of 22 U.S. teens” a week were dying of drug overdoses. Most from fentanyl, according to US News.
In 2022, “Fentanyl smuggled into the US from Mexico caused “200 American deaths every day,” according to Addiction Group. In 2023, it caused “more than 70,000 deaths in the U.S.” “By then, more than a quarter million Americans had died from fentanyl overdoses since 2018.”
Yet Republicans contend Trump is the toughest fighter against drugs and immigration. On September 28, a Texas Republican, U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, released a federal report stating “13,000 immigrants convicted of homicide” are living in the U.S. outside federal detention. But the U.S. Department of Homeland Security says Gonzales’ release misrepresents the facts. Those immigrants entered the U.S. “over the past 40 years or more.,” not just under the Biden Administration.
Instead, there’s been a big drop in crime under Joe Biden. According to the U.S. Justice Department FBI statistics show “murder dropped 11.6% from 2022 to 2023, the largest single year decline in the last 20 years.” Property crime was down too. Newly released FBI statistics show a “continued drop in U.S. crime in the first 6 months of 2024.” According to the FBI, “violent crime dropped 15.2% compared to the same period in 2023.” Robberies fell by 17.8%, aggravated assaults decreased by 12.5% and rapes decreased by 25.7%. Yet, on Oct 2, 2024, based on Gonzales’ misrepresenting release, Robert Romano, a Bandera Bulletin guest columnist and the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government – a conservative non-profit - wrote the Biden-Harris’ Department of Homeland Security has let “tens of thousands of violent criminals into the U.S. according to data the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released on September 25 …,” as previously noted by the Department of Homeland Security, misrepresents the facts.
Romano wrote the immigrants included “13,376 convicted murderers, 16,120 convicted of sexual assault, 64,579 convicted of assault, 43,546 convicted of burglary, larceny or robbery, 13,876 convicted of weapons offenses, 2,606 convicted of kidnapping and 2,218 convicted of commercialized sexual offenses…” Romano’s column declared since February 2021, “…2 out of every 100 let into the country are convicted violent criminals.” According to Romano, Biden’s policy lets criminals into the U.S. at a rate that will cause violent crime to rise “five times higher” than the current rate.
But indisputable facts show violent crime is falling under Joe Biden. And It will continue.
On June 4, 2024, he issued a tough executive order barring illegal immigrants from the U.S. and those who “pose a public safety or national security risk will be removed from the asylum process as quickly as possible.
Jodie Sinclair is an award-winning writer who holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and resides in Bandera, Texas.
