Third article in a series

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

The politicians raising the alarm about the large number of immigrants in the United States, as well as those trying to get in, cite several reasons for blocking their entry or deporting those who have gotten in. They are criminals. They bring in fentanyl. They are terrorists. They are a burden on the communities they settle in. By definition, they are illegal. The list could go on, but these complaints seem to be the most prominent.  This installment of the series will examine the objections singly.

Crime

Since he declared his candidacy in 2015, Donald Trump has characterized immigrants as being predominantly criminals. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their 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.”

Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center reported that 57 percent of Americans say that the large number of immigrants seeking to enter the country leads to increased crime. Breaking the responses down by party, 85 percent of Republicans hold that belief, while only 31 percent of Democrats agree that more immigrants lead to more crime. Those numbers support the maxim that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will come to believe it.

Study after study after study has consistently shown that, not only is there no positive relationship between immigration and crime rates, but immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than U.S. citizens. Furthermore, there is evidence that the crime rate of undocumented immigrants is lower than that of legal immigrants.

One such study deserves special note. It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science in 2020 (while Trump was president) and cited by the U.S. Dept. of Justice. The authors of the study examined the crime rates in Texas by citizenship status between 2012 and 2018 (including two years of Trump’s presidency). Texas was selected for the study because it had the second-highest number of immigrants of any state and, most importantly, it was the only state that required law-enforcement officers to report to the state central database the citizenship status of anyone arrested. The authors’ conclusion:

“We find that undocumented immigrants have substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants across a range of felony offenses. Relative to undocumented immigrants, U.S.-born citizens are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4 times more likely to be arrested for property crimes.”

Other studies reaching the similar conclusion that the crime rate of undocumented immigrants is lower than that of native-born Americans can be found here, here, here, and here. A summary of this line of research can be found here. Graham Ousey, professor of sociology and criminology at the College of William and Mary and co-author of the book, Immigration and Crime: Taking Stock, summarized their findings in an interview in this way:

“What we know from criminological research evidence is that first-generation immigrants are less involved in crime than non-immigrant US citizens. And while fewer studies have focused specifically on unauthorized immigrants, the evidence from those studies reveals a similar pattern: unauthorized immigrants are less involved in crime — including violence — than native-born US citizens.

Given this evidence, it is unlikely that exclusionary immigration policies will produce any ameliorative effect on rates of crime.”

While conducting research for this article, I purposely looked for studies that found that the crime rates of immigrants (legal or undocumented) were higher than, or even the same as, that of native-born Americans. I could not find any. 

Politicians who assert that the immigrants coming into the U.S are predominantly violent criminals cannot provide any evidence to support those claims. Earlier this year, Trump claimed that countries “all over the world” have emptied their prisons and insane asylums and are sending the residents to the United States. The Trump campaign could not corroborate that claim. Nor could anti-immigration organizations corroborate it. The Wall Street Journal, among others, has refuted this claim. Yet, Trump is still saying it.

Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) sent a letter two years ago to the Secretary of the Dept. of Homeland Security declaring, “It has been widely reported that the Venezuelan regime…is deliberately releasing violent prisoners early, including inmates convicted of murder, rape, and extortion and pushing them to join caravans heading to the United States.” That story originated on the website Breitbart News, which relied on “a source within” Customs and Border Protection and made a reference to a DHS report sent to Border Patrol agents instructing them to “look for violent criminals from Venezuela among the migrant caravans heading towards the United States.” No one has been able to find a copy of that report or even determine even if such a report ever existed.

Trump and others, including some on this blog, are prone to focusing on crimes in which an undocumented immigrant kills an American citizen and extrapolating that behavior to all undocumented immigrants. Such claims ignore all the evidence to date on the relationship of immigration and crime.

Fentanyl

What is true about crime in general is also true for fentanyl specifically—immigrants are falsely associated with fentanyl coming into the United States.

Most of the fentanyl that comes into the United States is made in Mexico and comes into this country over the Mexican border. Most immigrants come into this county over the border with Mexico. Politicians seize upon these two facts and imply that they are related. Sometimes they link the two directly as Ron DeSantis did in a gubernatorial debate: “We’ve had millions and millions of people pour in across illegally, we’ve had record numbers of fentanyl come in, we now see it ravaging our community like never before.” And that rhetoric is working. According to an NPR/IPSOS poll, 39 percent of all respondents and 60 percent of Republican respondents believed that “Most of the fentanyl entering the U.S. is smuggled in by unauthorized migrants crossing the border illegally.” That perception is at odds with official reports of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment “provides strategic analysis of the domestic drug situation during 2019 and the first half of 2020.” (That is during the presidency of Donald Trump.) The report described how fentanyl is brought into the U.S.:

“Mexican TCOs [transnational criminal organizations] employ a variety of methods to transport heroin, fentanyl, and other illicit opioids into the United States and use all manner of concealment methods to hide their drug shipments. Land transportation via the interstate system is the most predominant method of transporting illicit opioids, with personally-owned vehicles (POVs), rental vehicles, and trucks/tractor trailers identified as the most commonly used modes of transport….TCOs use alternative and less frequent commercial forms of transportation to transport illicit opioids, such as airlines, buses, trains, and shuttle services. Body carriers and parcel delivery services are also used to facilitate the movement of drug shipments.”

Notice that the use of immigrants to bring in fentanyl is not mentioned. In fact, most of the fentanyl being brought into the U.S. is being brought in, not by immigrants, but by American citizens.  As reported by the Cato Institute:

• “In 2021, U.S. citizens were 86.3 percent of convicted fentanyl traffickers—ten times greater than convictions of illegal immigrants for the same offense.”
• “Over 90 percent of fentanyl seizures occur at legal crossing points or interior vehicle checkpoints, not on migration routes, so U.S. citizens (who are subject to less scrutiny) when crossing legally are the best smugglers.”
• “Just 0.02 percent of the people arrested by Border Patrol for crossing illegally possessed any fentanyl whatsoever.”

Terrorism

As with violent crime and fentanyl, the claim is made that immigrants pose a grave threat to our national security. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark) recently declared, “The reality is that [Biden’s] open border is the greatest terrorist threat to the homeland in years.” His argument was based on speculation. Hard evidence reveals little relationship between immigrants and terrorism.

An analysis by the Cato Institute found “219 foreign-born terrorists who planned, attempted, or carried out attacks on U.S. soil from 1975 through 2022.” Those attacks resulted in 3,046 people murdered, of whom 2,979 died in the 9/11 attack. (The analysis does not include the number of people injured, but not killed.) Therefore, excluding the 9/11 attackers (who were in the U.S. legally), over that 47-year time span, there were 200 foreign-born terrorists who participated in attacks that resulted in 67 deaths. Only nine of that group of 200 were undocumented immigrants and no deaths resulted from their attacks.

A study by two University of Wisconsin scholars examined terrorism-related activity from 1990 to 2014, using criminological, socioeconomic, and demographic data from all 50 states. It reached a similar conclusion: “Increased undocumented immigration over this period is not associated with terrorist attacks, radicalization, or terrorism prosecutions.”

Similar to how fentanyl is brought into the U.S., analysts have concluded that “most modern acts of American terrorism directed or inspired by foreign terrorist organizations—such as ISIS-inspired attacks in the cities of San Bernardino, Orlando, and New York between 2015 and 2017—are instead committed by “homegrown” legal immigrants or U.S. citizens. This was in fact a deliberate strategy pursued by groups such as the self-proclaimed Islamic State, which calculated—correctly—that it would be far easier to inspire lone actors in the United States than attempt to send operatives into the country.”

As was stated in a prior article in this series, immigrants are human beings. Some human beings, including immigrants, commit crimes. Individual anecdotes notwithstanding, however, immigrants, as a group, do not pose a threat to the security or safety of United States citizens.

But they are breaking the law

One objection that is often made goes something like this: “I have nothing against legal immigrants, but the undocumented immigrants have broken the law and our laws should be enforced.” A corollary is: “There is a process. They should get in line and wait their turn.” First, many of those coming to the border in current years are requesting asylum, which is allowed by U.S. law. Second, the deck is stacked against them. As Tara Watson, an expert on U.S. immigration policy, explains, “[T]here are virtually no pathways for permanent legal migration for those with neither close family ties in the United States nor a college degree. And even with close ties, it takes years of waiting to get to the front of the line.” Confronted with this reality, it is not surprising that many undocumented immigrants either enter this country without asking for asylum or do not show up for their court hearings and, thus, are eligible for deportation.

The answer to these objections is simple: Change the law. If one takes away their not fitting into one of many largely arbitrary categories in immigration law, how do “legal” immigrants differ, substantively, from “illegal” immigrants? If the undocumented immigrants are unlikely to commit violent crimes, bring fentanyl or other dangerous drugs into the U.S., or pose a terrorist threat, why not let them in?

(The next article in the series:  the economic impact of immigrants and why we need them.)