Photo courtesy of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
As ICE raids intensify nationwide and the federalized national guard troops battle it out with rioters in L.A. liberals who defend illegal immigration make the claim that illegals commit crimes at a lower rate than native born, but this statistic is complete nonsense.
The mathematical reality is stark: In so-called sanctuary states and cities, intentionally so, few local jurisdictions have released data on immigrant prisoners. When you exclude entire states and cities from your data collection, you create a “data deficit”, cannot claim statistical accuracy about national crime patterns.
This omission is particularly distorting because sanctuary jurisdictions harbor 56 percent of the nation’s illegal immigrants – close to eight million people. California alone houses three million illegal immigrants, representing 21.8 percent of the nationwide total, yet sanctuary policies prevent accurate crime data collection from these very populations.
Every person who enters the United States illegally has, by definition, committed a federal crime. One hundred percent of illegal immigrants have committed at least one offense—either illegal entry or illegal presence. Moreover, those without convictions or pending charges who have broken U.S. immigration laws, including visa overstays and Visa Waiver Program violations, are still engaged in ongoing legal violations. Working without authorization is another crime. Failing to pay taxes on unreported income constitutes tax evasion. The compounding effect is that most undocumented immigrants commit multiple, ongoing violations.
This designation is crucial because of the unprecedented level of cartel control over illegal immigration. Testimony before Congress from Border Patrol leadership confirmed that unlike in the past when people could cross the border independently, now nobody crosses without paying the cartels, who determine when people cross, how many cross at a time, and control all aspects of illegal border crossings and often control the work these people do once inside the country, including drugs, prostitution, or other criminal activities. This means that virtually 100% of illegal border crossers have direct financial connections to designated terrorist organizations through the smuggling fees they pay.
The Department of State has designated many of these transnational gangs and cartels as terrorist organizations, including Tren de Aragua, MS-13, and six major Mexican cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs).
This designation is crucial because gang members are not one-time offenders. MS-13 actively recruits, organizes, and spreads violence in several countries, including the United States. When a gang member crosses the border illegally, they bring with them a higher statistical probability of committing multiple serious crimes.
The evidence is mounting: Nationwide, the U.S. Border Patrol has apprehended 218 gang affiliated subjects this year. Each gang member represents not just one crime (illegal entry) but an ongoing criminal enterprise. In a recent raid, immigration authorities had made close to 1,200 arrests in one day, and 613, or nearly 52%, were considered “criminal arrests”. Many of these offenders were wanted on multiple charges.
Another example of the danger of repeat offenders occurred when NYPD officials slammed New York’s sanctuary policies, which forbid the police from cooperating with federal immigration officials, after an illegal alien with previous convictions and a deportation order against him brutally raped a New York woman. This represents a systemic failure where ideology overrides public safety.
Even if the claim that illegal immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate were true, nearly all crimes committed by illegal aliens in the U.S. would not have occurred if those individuals had not been present in the country. Therefore, the total number of crimes committed in the U.S. increases.
If an illegal immigrant commits a crime, that crime rate contribution is 100% preventable through proper immigration enforcement.
Left-wing prosecutors favor a soft-on-crime overhaul of the justice system, allowing criminals to walk free and recidivism rates to skyrocket. When you combine open borders, with sanctuary city policies and liberal prosecutors, you create a perfect storm where criminal illegal aliens can commit crimes with minimal consequences.
Since President Trump took office, illegal immigration has plummeted by over 90%, with Border Patrol recording only 8,300 apprehensions in February 2025 compared to 140,600 in February 2024. This represents the lowest nationwide average apprehensions in CBP history, at approximately 330 per day. This sharp decline is due to fewer illegal crossings, demonstrating that the combination of strict border enforcement and aggressive deportation actions serves as an effective deterrent to those attempting to enter the country illegally. The same applies to drug trafficking.
Fentanyl deaths have declined significantly – with U.S. drug deaths dropping nearly 27 percent and synthetic opioid fatalities falling by 33%. Fentanyl seizures at the Mexican border have also decreased by almost 30 percent, with March 2025 showing a 54% drop compared to March 2024. This connection between reduced illegal immigration and drug trafficking reflects the reality that migrant smuggling has become a “multi-billion-dollar international business controlled by organized crime,” with cartels earning up to $30 million daily from combined human and drug smuggling operations, often using large migrant groups to distract Border Patrol while moving drug loads through unguarded areas.
Why Gavin Newsom, Mayor Bass, or anyone else would oppose Trump’s tight border and strict deportation policies is a mystery. But one thing is clear: the claim that illegal aliens commit crimes at a lower rate is a myth.
The post The Hidden Truth: Why “Lower Crime Rate” Claims About Illegal Immigration Are Fundamentally Flawed appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.