President Donald Trump has spent months crediting his immigration crackdown for a historic nationwide drop in violent crime. His own administration's data tells a very different story.
The homicide rate has genuinely fallen to its lowest point since at least 1900, and violent crime overall is dropping at the fastest recorded pace in American history. Trump and officials like domestic policy adviser Stephen Miller have claimed the crackdown deserves the credit, with Trump telling the United Nations General Assembly last week that under his watch, "we achieved the largest drop in violent crime ever recorded."
But a review by The Atlantic of FBI and Census figures found the places seeing the sharpest crime declines aren't the ones with the most aggressive ICE activity, and in several cases, it's the opposite. Of the five states and jurisdictions posting the biggest year-over-year drops in violent crime, three carry the administration's own "sanctuary jurisdiction" label for limiting police cooperation with ICE: Connecticut, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. Among the 11 states where homicides are falling fastest, six fall under that same sanctuary designation, including Vermont, Maryland and New York.
The reverse pattern shows up too. Georgia, Virginia and Florida have consistently ranked among the states with the most monthly ICE arrests, yet their violent-crime reductions lag well behind most of the country, landing in the 30s and high teens out of 50 states rather than near the top. Meanwhile, sanctuary cities including New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles are posting murder rates not seen in roughly half a century.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who himself has reportedly been at odds behind the scenes with the president on how to handle ICE arrests, defended the administration's framing anyway.
"It's common sense: when you remove illegal aliens off our streets, the violent U.S. crime rate DROPS," Mullin said. "President Trump is making America safe again."
Criminologists say the underlying trend is much harder to pin on any one policy. Northwestern economist Elisa Jácome pointed out that crime has generally been declining since the 1990s, aside from a pandemic-era spike, with the downward trajectory resuming well before Trump's second term began. A similar decline is unfolding internationally with no comparable enforcement campaign: Canadian officials reported a 16% one-year drop in homicides, the steepest in 40 years, and homicide figures in England and Wales recently hit their lowest point in nearly half a century despite record immigration there.
Research from UC Irvine criminology professor Charis Kubrin, covering close to 12,000 neighborhoods nationwide, found local immigrant population size simply doesn't move the needle on crime rates either way. That tracks with a separate New York Times review finding that fewer than 4 percent of people ICE arrested in July had any past violent-crime conviction, undercutting administration claims that most arrestees carry serious criminal records.
Political pressure appears to be driving much of the messaging, as polling showing Republicans have lost their traditional edge over Democrats on immigration, and Democrats gaining ground on crime as an issue.