Wilkinson: No, Donald Trump, immigrants don’t commit more crimes

A new explainer by the Migration Policy Institute seeks to apply facts to the lively discussion of immigration and crime. A spokesperson for MPI said the nonpartisan research organization, known for a sober tone, hoped to clear up “confusion.”

That’s one way to characterize Donald Trump’s nine-year campaign of lies. Trump is busy making his campaign’s closing argument to American voters. It’s a familiar pitch featuring a starring role for immigrants. Vice President Kamala Harris, in Trump’s telling, is opening the border to “millions” of brown people “from jails, from prisons” so they can kill you and your family and then, once everyone is dead, steal your job and vote for Democrats. Owing to all the migrant killers, a once-great nation is now “occupied America,” Trump said.

Indeed, so vicious are the migrants you can’t even call them human. “The Democrats say please don’t call them animals, they’re humans. I said no, they’re not humans. They’re not humans,” Trump said. “They’re animals.”

One might ask why a former prosecutor aspiring to win votes for high office would be so eager to flood the nation with killers. It seems politically inopportune, after all. But any such question imposes a heavier load than Trump’s demagogy can bear. Why did the witches of Salem cast spells? Witches, immigrants — their evil ways are beyond the imagination of the simple, honest folk. “We love the poorly educated,” Trump said in 2016.

What data shows

The U.S. violent crime rate has descended from its COVID peak in 2020, when Trump was president. Crime perpetrated by immigrants, however, has been low for a very long time. Incarceration rates for immigrants have been lower than those of native-born Americans since at least 1870, when data were first recorded. In 2020, immigrants were 60% less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the MPI report states.

It turns out immigrants are incarcerated at lower rates than native-born Americans because they are less likely to do what Trump himself has done — commit crimes. “A growing volume of research demonstrates that not only do immigrants commit fewer crimes, but they also do not raise crime rates in the U.S. communities where they settle,” the MPI report states. “In fact, some studies indicate that immigration can lower criminal activity, especially violent crime, in places with inclusive policies and social environments where immigrant populations are well established.”

One social environment where immigrant populations 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. Yet, as my colleague Justin Fox has written, police statistics show New York City had the fifth-lowest homicide rate among the country’s 50 largest cities in 2023. New York City’s Queens County, one of the most ethnically diverse enclaves in the world, where nearly half the population is foreign-born, is the fourth-safest large county in the United States. A correlation between immigrants and safety is not exclusive to New York. More than one-quarter of the residents of Boston, which the Economist magazine lauded as the safest big city in America, are foreign-born.

Of course, since immigrants are humans and not animals, some do commit crimes. In the rare cases in which an immigrant kills a young woman, Trump’s demagogy acquires an almost religious tenor, especially if the young woman was, according to Trump, “beautiful.”

Despite such forays into reality-based demagogy, however, most of Trump’s schtick is, and always was, lies. A 2020 federal study of Texas found that immigrants of all legal statuses were arrested at less than half the rate of U.S.-born citizens for violent and drug crimes and were arrested at one-quarter the rate of U.S.-born citizens for property crimes. “Unauthorized immigrants in Texas by far had the lowest offending rates compared to the U.S. born and lawfully present immigrants,” the MPI report states.

Eager consumers of lies

Of course, Trump’s lies wouldn’t help him if there weren’t a ready market for them. Republicans are eager consumers. In a 2023 Gallup survey, only 22% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents agreed that New York City, home to Fox News, would be “safe to live in or visit.” With encouragement from a wide range of GOP leaders, including Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, many Republicans also believe that large numbers of undocumented immigrants are committing crimes by illegally voting in elections.

Perhaps Johnson is unaware of state audits that debunk the claims of unlawful immigrant voting. Curiously, however, Johnson, with the entire House at his command, did not impanel a House committee to get to the bottom of such allegations. Nor did he hire investigators to compile evidence, or demand that GOP legislatures launch investigations in their states. He did not hire top Republican election lawyers, many of whom work within walking distance of the U.S. Capitol, to file claims and focus the legal system on the alleged problem.

Republicans spend billions of dollars on elections yet won’t hire experts to investigate the alleged cause of their defeats. Strange, isn’t it? Perhaps Johnson and his colleagues are all bumbling fools. Or simply home-grown liars like Trump.

Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. ©2024 Bloomberg. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.