On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump took the escalators down to the lobby of Trump Tower and kicked off his presidential campaign by declaring that "when Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best. They're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists and some, I assume, are good people.” But, Donald Trump is a liar. That’s not an opinion, that’s a fact:
Immigrant populations in the United States have been growing fast for decades now. Crime in the same period, however, has moved in the opposite direction, with the national rate of violent crime today well below what it was in 1980.
In “one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies of the local immigrant-crime relationship,” researchers from four universities and the Marshall Project compared immigration and crime data from 200 areas—including Trump’s home turf of New York City—and found “that crime fell more often than it rose even as immigrant populations grew almost across the board.” Overall, “the 10 places with the largest increases in immigrants all had lower levels of crime in 2016 than in 1980.”
And yet, the researchers note, “as of 2017, according to Gallup polls, almost half of Americans agreed that immigrants make crime worse.” In California, where Trump supporters cheered as Orange County signed onto a publicity stunt of a lawsuit against the state from the Trump administration over pro-immigrant legislation, violent crime decreased by more than half as the immigrant population more than doubled since 1980. So why do Trump and his allies keep pushing their lie? Because that’s all they have.
According to the research, “in general, the study’s data suggests either that immigration has the effect of reducing average crime, or that there is simply no relationship between the two, and that the 54 areas in the study where both grew were instances of coincidence, not cause and effect. This was a consistent pattern in each decade from 1980 to 2016, with immigrant populations and crime failing to grow together”:
In a majority of areas, the number of immigrants increased at least 57 percent and as much as 183 percent, with the greatest increases occurring in the 1990s and early 2000s. Violent crime rates in most areas ranged between a 43 percent decline and a 6 percent rise, often trending downward by the 2000s. Places with a sharp rise in the immigrant population experienced increases in crime rates no more frequently than those with modest or no growth in immigration. On average, the immigrant population grew by 137 percent between 1980 and 2016, with average crime falling 12 percent over the same period.
Research has already shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crime than U.S.-born Americans, and there’s important incentive for this—they don’t want to get deported. Even the most minor of infractions that would result in a ticket for most U.S.-born people have resulted in immigrants getting torn from their homes. Last year, Texas dad Gerardo Martinez-Morales was deported after he was pulled over on his way to the doctor for a broken taillight. He had no criminal record.
And yet, Trump has claimed that “every day, sanctuary cities release illegal immigrants, drug dealers, traffickers, gang members back into our communities. They’re safe havens for just some terrible people.” Another lie, as so-called “sanctuary city” policies make cities safer, because immigrant communities are able to trust local law enforcement enough to report crimes. And still, Trump is hellbent on this fearmongering strategy that doesn’t always work—in Virginia and New Jersey last year, Republican candidates for governor ran on scaring white people about sanctuary cities. They both lost.