Trump’s fear of a ‘migrant crime wave’ plays well, but there’s little evidence it exists

With the 2024 presidential election coming to a close, Donald Trump and other Republican candidates are upping the volume as they hammer away at one of their central messages: The influx of migrants from the southern border has put Americans in danger.
An “army of migrant gangs who are waging a campaign of violence and terror against our citizens” are coming into the country, Trump claimed last week at his Madison Square Garden rally. Incessant TV ads echo the same theme.
But most of the horror stories setting a foreboding and ominous tone are anecdotal episodes — not evidence of any sort of widespread migrant crime wave. In fact, experts and data say there really is little evidence of any such trend.
In New York City, where over 210,000 migrants have arrived since Spring 2022, there’s been no associated spike in crime. Despite oft-repeated claims about a “migrant crime wave,” there is no available data that shows any evidence of a migrant-driven increase in crime in the city.
“The overwhelming majority of police departments across the U.S. don’t track immigration,” said Christopher Herrmann, assistant professor in the Department of Law & Police Science at CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “We don’t know who’s documented or undocumented at arrest or documented or undocumented on police reports.”
Regardless of the truth of the claims, the points seem to be landing with some voters who fear the impact of the newcomers on their lives, jobs and safety. Trump, who has made slowing immigration a central pillar of his campaign, talked at length about the issue at his rally last Sunday at the Garden.
“They’re allowing criminals from all over the world to enter our country,” the GOP nominee said to a crowd of thousands, saying a beat later that migrants have “even taken over Times Square.”
Many of Trump’s claims, however, have been found to be overblown. Instances circulated among the political right of crimes done by migrants are often one-off incidents. 
“You can’t discount it, you can’t just forget about it or sweep it under the rug — but at the same time we have [around a thousand] people who are killed every day in the U.S.,” Herrmann said.
“Rarely are those killed by illegal immigrants. You’re cherry-picking those cases.”
Herrmann, a former crime analysis supervisor for the NYPD, said that immigrants are actually victimized more than longtime residents — often targeted for their status. He noted that immigrants are reluctant to go to the police for fear of getting deported.
Multiple studies have debunked the idea that immigrants do more crime or are incarcerated at higher rates than native-born Americans, including a 2023 study from Stanford economists that found immigrants are at least 30% less likely to be incarcerated than those born in the U.S. 
“This election cycle has been marred by politicians trying to paint immigrants as a danger to public safety and the American way of life,” Murad Awawdeh, President and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, said in a statement.
While there have been a handful of high-profile episodes involving migrants, such as the shooting of a tourist in Times Square, the influx of migrants into New York has corresponded with an overall decrease in many major crime categories across the city.
“Study after study show that cities with large immigrant populations are safer than those with less immigrants,” Awawdeh said. “Some politicians seek to divide us by scapegoating immigrants for their own political gain, instead of providing real solutions to the challenges facing Americans today. We must resist and fight back against these racist and regressive narratives that can all too often lead to dangerous actions.”
The purported dangers of the city’s migrant crisis are, in particular, reverberating on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley, where local House candidates —Republicans and Democrats alike — are running on platforms of restricting immigration in an attempt to appeal to voters.
Laura Gillen, a Democrat hoping to unseat Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito on Long Island, has portrayed herself as tough on immigration, speaking about further restricting the U.S./Mexico border in a political ad. 
“I want you to hear me loud and clear,” Gillen says in the ad. “You send me to Congress, I will work with anyone from any party to secure our southern border, lock up criminals pushing fentanyl and stop the migrant crisis.”
House challenger Mike LiPetri has run against Tom Suozzi on a hard-on-immigration policy. Like Trump, LiPetri has backed mass deportations. 
“Open border Democrats like Kamala Harris and Tom Suozzi created a migrant crime wave that is destroying our communities,” LiPetri wrote on X last month.
Suozzi has, himself, touted his tough bona fides on immigration in campaign ads, focusing on immigration and border security to win a special election earlier this year, flipping blue the seat previously held by former Rep. George Santos.
Now, he’s hoping to secure re-election on the same platform: “The border is broken,” he told a crowd at the DNC in August.
Despite the lack of any real evidence migrants are driving up crime, the political messaging has proven to be effective.
In a recent New York Times/Siena poll immigration was ranked as the second-most important issue to voters, falling after the economy, jobs and the stock market — but above abortion.  
The poll results showed 27% of poll takers listing crime as the most important problem facing New York City, with 19% saying immigration was the biggest issue.
Border crossings have dropped in recent months, and the crisis in New York City has taken a step back from the fever-pitch it was at last year, with fewer migrants arriving in the city, and the city now taking steps to close migrant shelters like the tent complex on Randalls Island.
Trump has also tied the migrant crisis to quality of life and economic concerns — with Republicans pointing to city-funded shelters, a pilot program for food debit cards and other resources given to migrants as a drain on taxpayer dollars.
Fear-mongering around immigration is like “red meat” for Republicans’ base as they use migrants as a scapegoat for broader issues, said Camille Rivera, a Democratic consultant.
Incidents of violence done by migrants are picked up and amplified by mainstream and right-wing media — and often turns into something bigger than the sum of its parts, she said.
“It is simple messaging,” Rivera said. “It is easy for American families to fear the unknown, and to fear that the fact that they are trying to make ends meet, struggling in their own lives, and there’s in their mind no one else to blame.”