No, immigrants no longer commit crimes

A new explainer film from the Migration Policy Institute attempts to apply facts to the lively discussion about immigration and crime. A spokesman for the MPI said the non-partisan research organization, known for a matter-of-fact tone, hoped to clear up “confusion.”

This is how Donald Trump's nine-year campaign of lies can be characterized. Trump is busy making his campaign's final speech to American voters. It's a familiar pitch with a starring role for immigrants. Vice President Kamala Harris is opening the border, in Trump's words, to “millions” of brown people “from prisons, from prisons” so that they can kill you and your family and then, when everyone is dead, steal your job and vote for the Democrats. Thanks to all the migrant murderers, a once great nation is now “occupied America,” Trump said.

In fact, the migrants are so evil that they cannot even be called human. “The Democrats say please don’t call them animals, they are people. I said no, they are not human. They are not human,” Trump said. “They are animals.”

One might wonder why a former prosecutor seeking votes for high office would be so eager to flood the nation with murderers. After all, it seems politically inappropriate. But any such question poses a heavier burden than Trump's demagoguery can bear. Why did the witches of Salem cast spells? Witches, immigrants – their evil deeds are beyond the imagination of simple, honest people. “We love the less educated,” Trump said in 2016.

Violent crime rates in the U.S. have fallen since their COVID peak in 2020, when Trump was president. However, immigrant crime has long been low. Immigrant incarceration rates have been lower than those of U.S.-born Americans since at least 1870, when data were first collected. According to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, immigrants were 60% less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans in 2020, the MPI report said.

It turns out that immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans because they are less likely to do what Trump himself did: commit crimes. “A growing body of research shows that immigrants not only commit fewer crimes, but also do not increase crime rates in the U.S. communities where they settle,” the MPI report says. “In fact, some studies suggest that immigration can reduce criminal activity, particularly violent crime, in places with inclusive policies and social environments where immigrant populations are well established.”

One social environment where immigrants are well established is New York City. The city is home to about 3 million immigrants, including an undocumented population estimated at 500,000 or more. But as my colleague Justin Fox has written, police statistics show that in 2023, New York City had the fifth-lowest murder rate among the country's 50 largest cities. Queens County in New York City, one of the most ethnically diverse enclaves in the world, where nearly half of the population is foreign-born and the fourth safest large county in the United States. The connection between immigrants and security doesn't just exist in New York. More than a quarter of residents in Boston, hailed by The Economist magazine as the safest big city in America, are foreign-born.

Of course, since immigrants are people and not animals, some actually commit crimes. On the rare occasions when an immigrant kills a young woman, Trump's demagoguery takes on an almost religious tenor, particularly when the young woman was, according to Trump, “beautiful.”

Despite such forays into reality-based demagoguery, however, most of Trump's schticks are and will remain lies. A 2020 federal study out of Texas found that immigrants of all legal statuses were less than half as likely as U.S.-born citizens to be arrested for violent and drug crimes, and only a quarter as likely as U.S.-born citizens to be arrested for property crimes. “Unauthorized immigrants in Texas had by far the lowest crime rates compared to immigrants born and legally residing in the United States,” the MPI report said.

Of course, Trump's lies wouldn't help him if there wasn't a market for them. Republicans are avid consumers. In a 2023 Gallup poll, only 22% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents agreed that New York City, home of Fox News, was “safe to live or visit.” Many Republicans believe that large numbers of undocumented immigrants are committing crimes by voting illegally. This is supported by a wide range of GOP leaders, including Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Johnson may not be aware of government audits that debunk claims of illegal voting by immigrants. Curiously, Johnson, who had the entire House of Representatives at his command, did not convene a House committee to investigate such allegations. He also did not assign investigators to collect evidence or require Republican legislatures in their states to investigate. He did not hire top Republican election lawyers, many of whom work within walking distance of the U.S. Capitol, to file lawsuits and focus the legal system on the alleged problem.

Republicans spend billions of dollars on elections but don't hire experts to investigate the alleged cause of their defeats. Strange, isn't it? Maybe Johnson and his colleagues are all fools. Or simply domestic liars like Trump.

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