THE LIE OF A MIGRANT CRIME WAVE TO JUSTIFY TRUMP OR ICE ACTIONS

When Donald Trump speaks, you can expect to hear him talk about “migrant crime,” a category he has coined and defined as a terrifying binge of criminal activity committed by undocumented immigrants spreading across the country.  A lie repeated often enough starts to be believed as true.  That’s why a Pew poll, found 57% of Americans said that a large number of migrants seeking to enter the country leads to more crime. Republicans (85%) overwhelmingly say the migrant surge leads to increased crime in the U.S. A far smaller share of Democrats (31%) say the same. The poll found that 63% of Democrats say it does not have much of an impact.  How Americans View the Situation at the U.S.-Mexico Border, Its Causes and Consequences,  https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/02/15/how-americans-view-the-situation-at-the-u-s-mexico-border-its-causes-and-consequences/

But is it true that the migration surge has caused increased crime as claimed by Trump?  Research indicates that is simply false to say there is an increased crime rate due to immigrants.  “This is a public perception problem. It’s always based upon these kinds of flashpoint events where an immigrant commits a crime,” explains Graham Ousey, a professor at the College of William & Mary and the co-author of “Immigration and Crime: Taking Stock.” “There’s no evidence for there being any relationship between somebody’s immigrant status and their involvement in crime.”  Debunking ‘Migrant Crime Wave’ Myth, https://www.endfmrnow.org/debunking-migrant-crime-wave-myth-the-brennan-center

“From Henry Cabot Lodge in the late 19th century to Donald Trump, anti-immigration politicians have repeatedly tried to link immigrants to crime, but our research confirms that this is a myth and not based on fact,” says Stanford economist Ran Abramitzky and his co-authors in a study “Law-Abiding Immigrants: The Incarceration Gap Between Immigrants and the US-born, 1870–2020”  (The National Bureau of Economic Research July 2023), https://www.nber.org/papers/w31440

In fact, immigration has been shown to decrease crime.

The evidence indicates that immigration is consistently linked to decreases in violent (e.g., murder) and property (e.g., burglary) crime.  Robert Adelman et al., "Urban crime rates and the changing face of immigration: Evidence across four decades" JOURNAL OF ETHNICITY IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE (NOV. 21, 2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15377938.2016.1261057.   Moreover, research also provides evidence that it is not more dangerous to live in neighborhoods with more immigrants.  Is It Dangerous to Live in Neighborhoods with More Immigrants? Assessing the Effects of Immigrant Concentration on Crime Patterns. Crime & Delinquency, 68(1), 52-79 (2021), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00111287211007736?journalCode=cadc

This research holds true even in the case of undocumented immigrants.  Numerous studies show that undocumented immigration does not increase violent crime.  Light and Miller, DOES UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRATION INCREASE VIOLENT CRIME? Criminology (2018), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1745-9125.12175. 

This is true in so-called sanctuary cities where the evidence demonstrates no discernable difference when comparing to similarly situated non- sanctuary cities with sanctuary cities.  O'Brien et al, The Politics of Refuge: Sanctuary Cities, Crime, and Undocumented Immigration, Urban Affairs Review, 55(1), 3-40 (2017), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1078087417704974

Finally, it has been found that undocumented immigrants are 33 percent less likely to be incarcerated than people born in the United States.  Oxford Economic Papers, (Jan. 2021), https://academic.oup.com/oep/article-abstract/73/1/200/5572162?redirectedFrom=fulltext