Trump's new favorite attack line 'not supported by the data': analysis

Former President Donald Trump likes to focus on one particular purported consequence of the influx of migrants coming into the U.S. from the southern border: an increase in crime.

There's just one problem, according to an NBC News report: Trump's supposed increase in crime isn't happening. In fact, crime is broadly down around the country — and it's down the most in many of the cities that have seen the largest numbers of migrants.

“You know, in New York, what’s happening with crime is it’s through the roof, and it’s called ‘migrant crime,’” Trump told a recent Michigan rally. “They beat up police officers. You’ve seen that they go in, they stab people, hurt people, shoot people. It’s a whole new form, and they have gangs now that are making our gangs look like small potatoes.”

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However, wrote Olympia Sooner and Garrett Haake, "An NBC News review of available 2024 crime data from the cities targeted by Texas’ 'Operation Lone Star,' which buses or flies migrants from the border to major cities in the interior — shows overall crime levels dropping in those cities that have received the most migrants. Overall crime is down year over year in Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, New York and Los Angeles. Crime has risen in Washington, D.C., but local officials do not attribute the spike to migrants." Moreover, the report says, "a Department of Justice report found that 'there was no evidence that the percentage of unauthorized or authorized immigrant population at the city level impacted shifts in the homicide rates and no evidence that immigration is connected to robbery at the city level.'"

This is consistent with decades of studies showing that immigrants — both those here legally and illegally — are across the board less likely to commit crimes than native-born American citizens, from violent crime to property crime to sex offenses.

Trump's campaign, for its part, has responded to these data by alleging with no evidence that “Democrat cities purposefully do not document when crimes are committed by illegal immigrants, because they don’t want American citizens to know the truth about the dangerous impact Joe Biden’s open border is having on their communities.”