In announcing his anti-crime agenda a year ago, President Joe Biden stated that the end of the pandemic could drive crime even higher than the record-setting number of homicides America was experiencing.

A report last week brought his gloomy projection into stark reality. Three years ago, it was unimaginable to believe that the surging crime rate in many U.S. cities would qualify as being deadlier than Russia’s assault on Ukraine, Europe’s second-largest country. But using pre-pandemic data, the United Nations Human Rights office revealed that 52 U.S. cities had worse homicide rates than the civilian death rate in the war-ravaged nation.

Recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau data shows that three of the top five metros that saw sharp population declines between 2020 and 2021 were in California.

The Los Angeles-Long Beach metropolitan area topped the list, losing 176,000 residents, followed by the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley metro, which declined by 116,000 residents and the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara region, which lost 43,000.

On the East Coast, the New York-Newark-New Jersey metropolitan area declined by 328,000 residents, the highest in the nation in raw numbers, while in the Midwest, the Chicago area lost about 92,000 residents.

Overregulation, high taxes and escalating housing costs are factors driving people to freer states. Many young people fled major metro areas during the pandemic because of the harsh lockdowns imposed by Democratic leaders.

Chris Hartline, communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, says that fears about rising crime dovetails with inflation as the top two voter concerns heading into the midterm elections. Quality of life, he states, contributes to a general sense of unease about the direction of the country since it stretches beyond city politics to an issue that can energize voters statewide.

Ominously for Democrats, a Washington-Post-ABC News poll taken in April gave Republicans a 12-point advantage on handling crime.

The Biden administration’s porous border policy, leading to a massive influx of undocumented migrants coming through the southern border, is not helping alleviate crime fears. Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows a dramatic increase in homicides, assaults, incidents of domestic violence, illegal weapons possession, and sexual offenses committed by illegal aliens between 2020 and 2021.

Last week, the agency announced that there were 199,976 migrant encounters in July, taking the total so far this fiscal year to 1.946 million encounters. Illegal immigrants committed 1,178 assault and domestic violence crimes in 2021, which represents a more than 400 percent increase from the 208 in 2020.

In protest of the Biden administration’s open border policy, Texas Gov. Abbott began busing migrants to Washington, D.C., as early as April. Arizona has also been moving migrants to Washington, D.C., and New York City.

With the city’s homeless shelters being overrun by migrants, elected leaders like New York City Mayor Eric Adams appealed to President Biden for “additional federal resources.”

Last week, it was reported that Adams was planning to use a luxury Manhattan hotel to accommodate hundreds of asylum-seeking migrants. There, migrants would have access to an Internet lounge and a fitness center with treadmills, bicycles and free weights. A standard room included high-speed Wi-Fi and 32-inch, flat-screen LCD TVs with cable programming.

Outside the luxury hotel, homeless and mentally ill Americans live in a world fraught with public safety hazards such as poor sanitation, street crime and drugs. Even those homeless entering the city shelter system must cope with assaults, thefts, cockroaches in the food and rodents.

There’s something wrong with a government whose citizens must live in Third World squalor while undocumented migrants enjoy the perks and benefits of a lottery winner.

Napoleon once stated that the battlefield is a scene of constant chaos.

Those Americans who have fled - or are living in the battle zones of our major cities - know the feeling.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.