One of the things that has always driven me crazy about the left is how much they lie and twist the facts on the issue of crime. Liberals in my mind have always been the people who whine about blacks being stopped and arrested more than whites, while ignoring crime disparities between the races. They hate racial profiling despite the fact that all police work is profiling, and race is a major predictor of criminality. Leftists in the media and academia spread falsehoods about police shooting unarmed black men as they ignore the orders of magnitude more violence committed by blacks against people of all races. I once heard some online rightists talk about “blood libel” in this context, and although I’m allergic to most forms of rightoid hyperbole, this one seems to fit. Blaming a group of people for a problem that it is not responsible for is something that should be shamed.
That said, as I’ve been watching the Trump campaign and the conservative movement mobilize around the idea of immigrant crime as a serious threat, I’ve started to feel the same kind of revulsion towards ugly lies that I’ve traditionally felt towards analogous leftist narratives. In the case of lies about racist law enforcement, not only is this perspective wrong, but it creates an inverse reality, since it is poor communities that most need police protection. Similarly, conservatives are not simply mistaken on immigrant crime. They are spreading a narrative that makes society dumber and actually obscures the positive impact of new arrivals in this one area of life.
Lies and Blood Libels Are Bad
Consider that the central issues of Trump’s campaign are crime and immigration, which he keeps telling us are intimately related. A recent rally in Georgia is representative, when he warned that gangs of Venezuelans were going to take over the entire state of Colorado and then said this,
Our country is dying. Our country is dying. We’re taking all the criminals from all over the world… The crime rates for countries all over the world is way down because the citizens of their countries have demanded it. They’re taking the criminals out and they’re moving them and dumping them into the United States of America. And their crime rates are cut in half and less than that. And their jails, which were packed in many cases are close to empty, and very soon, will be totally empty because they’ve taken their prisoners and they’ve dumped them into the United States of America. We’re like a dumping ground and we’re not going to allow it. We’re bringing them back. We’re bringing them back.
Trump’s language on the topic appears to be getting more graphic, with him telling an audience that migrants “are people at the highest level of killing that cut your throat and won’t even think about it the next morning,” and also the types to “grab young girls and slice them up right in front of their parents.” His campaign of course does not provide evidence for any of this.
Now there’s always a tendency to try and sanewash Trump. When he’s saying things that are obviously false and crazy, someone comes along and informs us that he’s actually getting at some truth in a deeper sense. In this situation, the argument might go that he’s not talking about all immigrants, but specific groups of migrants in particular locations.
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This is a good piece, and you are correct that people on the right often make bad arguments when it comes to immigration and crime. One causal channel you don't address is: more immigrants –> more Democratic voters –> Democrats win elections –> less "tough on crime" policies.
No, Democrats are lying on crime by skewing the reporting numbers or simply not submitting the data at all. You really need to take underreporting into account as many Democrat controlled areas have cut police funding (resulting in fewer people bothering to report crimes because police will not respond in a timely manner or actually solve their cases), elected "Social Justice" prosecutors that avoid charging members of minority demographics (particularly illegal immigrants who would then be subject to deportation), and illegal immigrants themselves are less likely to report crimes for fear of being deported.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/09/19/media_push_misleading_crime_stats_protect_democrat_narrative__151645.html
Likewise, what limited recent data we do have from ICE implies that we are letting in people with significantly higher criminality than our average.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) checks the background of illegal aliens they have in custody. But, the administration’s letter to Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) shows that as of July 21, 2024, ICE let 435,719 convicted criminals and 226,847 people with pending criminal charges in their home countries into the U.S.
Of those cleared by ICE, 13,099 have convictions for homicide, and another 1,845 were facing criminal charges. Some 9,461 have convictions for sex offenses (not including assault or commercialized sex), and 2,659 face pending charges. The convictions include other crimes such as assault (62,231), robbery (10,031), sexual assault (15,811), weapons offenses (13,423), and dangerous drugs (56,533).
About 7.4 million noncitizens are in the “national docket data,” so 662,776 is 9% of the total, and if one extrapolates the numbers to the homicide rate in this country, it strongly indicates that the government is letting migrants into this country who commit murder at a rate 50% higher than the rest of the U.S. population.
And these numbers clearly underestimate the crime rate of these noncitizens. The noncitizens in the “national docket data” turned themselves in to border agents for processing or were caught. Those who don’t turn themselves in are obviously far more likely to have something to hide from those doing the processing, so-called “gotaways,” who are observed illegally entering the U.S. but not caught or turned back.
These figures coincide with other data from the Arizona prison system and show illegal aliens commit crime at much higher rates than Americans or legal immigrants.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/10/01/the_new_data_on_migrant_crime_151712.html
Incidentally, when Trump talks about specific examples of illegal aliens doing gruesomely horrific things to people, he's usually referencing MS13, which his administration made a point of addressing. MS-13 has mottos consistent with its rules, beliefs, expectations and reputation, including the Spanish “mata, viola, controla,” which translates to “kill, rape, control.” They're notorious for the fact that their initiation for new members requires them to kill someone.
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/mara-salvatrucha-deadliest-street-gang-america#:~:text=This%20research%20paper%20addresses%20Mara,exponentially%20into%20the%20United%20States.
https://www.boston.com/news/crime/2016/04/21/inside-ms-13-initiation-rituals-and-internal-feuds/