Democrats Are Gambling With Tennessean’s Safety (Marsha Blackburn Op-Ed)

Image: Blackburn during recent visit to the Southern Border Image Credit: Marsha Blackburn / Instagram 

By Senator Marsha Blackburn –

While the Biden administration keeps busy sabotaging border patrol and local law enforcement, American communities are falling apart. Murder rates are at a 25-year high, and violent crime as a whole – including rape, robbery, and aggravated assault offenses – are similarly spiking.

What we are seeing across the country is a ripple effect of the lawlessness along the southern border. In the Volunteer State, folks are worried about how Joe Biden’s actions will make their communities more dangerous. By using a series of executive orders to strip away important immigration controls, Biden has allowed more than three million illegal aliens into the country. In March, the number of arrests by border patrol reached the highest on record. Now, the cartels rule over the southern border, and the White House’s inaction has empowered these violent gangs to expand their drug and human trafficking enterprise further into the United States. 

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Last year, American officials seized over 11,000 pounds of fentanyl from drug mules, with more than half smuggled over the U.S.-Mexico border at San Diego. But who knows how many thousands of pounds of dangerous drugs we weren’t able to find? What we do know is that the drug trade is flourishing far beyond the border. In Benton County, Sheriff Kenny Christopher told me that local drug crime has spiked and that they find fentanyl in about 80% of the drugs they seize. Just last week, three drug cartel members in Nashville pleaded guilty to smuggling millions of dollars worth of fentanyl into the U.S. 

Along with the spike in drug running, the increase in vulnerable migrants making their way across the border has widened the potential victim pool for human traffickers. In East Tennessee, reports of human trafficking are on the rise, and across the Volunteer State, an average of 85 minors are trafficked every month. 

Make no mistake – Joe Biden and the radical left know their policy victories come at the cost of our safety. They choose to push for them anyway. Biden’s demands to end Title 42 will invite as many as 18,000 illegal immigrants across the border every day. To put that in context, that’s more than the populations of 90% of the towns in Tennessee. The Biden administration needs to acknowledge the crime crisis they’ve created and get to work fixing it. It’s time to return to the law and order policies of President Trump. In the Senate, I am leading the charge to empower law enforcement officials to secure their communities, keep Title 42 in place, and finish building the wall.

The left regularly gambles with our safety on behalf of radical policies, and when it comes to crime and the border, they are going all in. Instead of fighting in court to force through their pro-open borders, pro-crime agenda, the Biden administration should put America first. Democrats must put an end to their attacks on law and order and start prioritizing the safety of the American people. 

About the Author: Marsha Blackburn is the senior United States Senator from Tennessee. A businesswoman, she is a member of the Republican Party. Blackburn was a state senator from 1999 to 2003 and represented Tennessee’s 7th congressional district in the U.S. House from 2003 to 2019. On November 6, 2018, she became the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate from Tennessee, defeating former Democratic Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen. She took over as the state’s senior senator in January 2021, when outgoing Senator Lamar Alexander retired. Follow Blackburn on Twitter @MarshaBlackburn and Facebook.