I'm more and more beginning to think that the decline of illegal immigration is playing a big role in this story.
The big thing people don't understand about crime is how concentrated it is in a small slice of the population. The same people go back to prison or jail, get released, and then go back again dozens of times. It's plausible that repeat offenders commit over 90% of all serious crime in the USA.
The big thing people don't understand about immigrants and crime is how immigrants don't usually get the chance to become part of that small repeat-offender slice. If you commit a crime, you get deported! Especially under Trump. So immigrants are often an unusually low-crime population after they've been settled, because the repeat offenders that usually cause 90% of the trouble have been removed.
Under Trump, new arrivals of unauthorized immigrants have dropped to record lows, and the older cohorts of settled immigrants are getting aggressively deported for offenses like DUIs, minor assaults, etc... The unauthorized immigrants that are left are more and more the ones who are really good at staying out of trouble.
Tell me you know nothing about either immigration or crime without telling me. In no particular order:
1. There are plenty of immigrant repeat offenders. Most crimes, esp. by repeat offenders, are misdemeanors that do not trigger immediate deportation. Conversely, there are very, very few repeat murderers, so they would not be affected.
2. Immigrants convicted of crimes are not instantly deported; they serve their sentence first, meaning they are still around to be counted in data. The claim about deportations artificially lowering rates is wrong.
3. The share of deportatees with criminal records has plummetted. Prior to this admin, ~70% of deportations came directly out of prisons. Per the admin, in FY25 only 38% had any criminal record at all, to say nothing of a violent record. The drive to increase numbers has led them to target people who don't think they have a reason to hide.
4. The vast, overwhelming majority of cleared homicides happen between native born citizens. The vast majority of uncleared homicides are in areas with fairly low immigrant populations. Combined with known local data about where murders have dropped, it's practically impossible for this to be a meaningful fraction of the drop.
5. Extra deportations are widely known to reduce cooperation with law enforcement, which lowers clearances and thus increases repeat offenses.
If you're gonna make shit up at least try to make it plausible first
>5. Extra deportations are widely known to reduce cooperation with law enforcement, which lowers clearances and thus increases repeat offenses.
No, there's really no actual empirical research backing this. This is one of those leftist shibboleths that gets repeated to make them feel like they have broader motivation behind their beliefs.
Leading with an ad hominem style rebuttal doesn't help your argument or qualifications here.
On #1) You're probably not familiar with the literature on criminal versatility. It's one of the most consistent findings in criminology. Criminals don't specialize. There is a very high correlation between the people who are ticketed for simple assault or speeding one day and then arrested for serious assault or reckless endangerment the next day. "Murdering" isn't a specialized criminal occupation outside of a very rare few hitman. Most killings follow arguments or disputes over money, relationships, etc...
#2) This isn't a counter, this is part of what I'm saying happens. They get deported after serving their sentence so they can't commit another crime in the USA. That's the core portion of my argument, and if you don't follow then you're completely lost. Also, fwiw, under Obama (Secure Communities Act) and in most of the USA today, unauthorized can be detained after simply being arrested while held in jail. And while I'm sure some of those deported that way are innocent, the majority were probably higher-risk persons.
#3) The proportion with convictions have fallen, but not the absolute number of those with convictions. Deportation from jails and for those with convictions have both risen. You're mixing up that the number without convictions has risen faster. In any case, 90% of ICE deportations have been male in Trump's term, likely on average younger males, which by simple demographics make them higher-risk of contributing to crime. That's true of virtually any young male population.
#4) Jeff reported that the drop 2025 to 2026 was equivalent to 2,600 murders. It's not a huge number. Under Biden, roughly 1.5 million new arrivals were coming in the last several years, mostly young males without much education, and that flow has almost stopped. It's not inconceivable that pausing a flow of 1.5M per year of mostly young males could depress murders by several hundred. And as a matter of fact, ICE statistics last year showed 1,200 of their deportees had a murder conviction. This is all well within the ballpark needed.
Also "happen between native born citizens" - first this isn't really well-tracked, but 2nd, again you are missing my point entirely. I know immigrant populations are low-crime, but my entire point is that they only become low-crime because criminal offenders are deported.
#5) Widely reported, not widely known. There aren't good quality studies to report this, and in any case T, U, VAWA and SIJS visa programs are still growing under Trump, so evidently they aren't being depressed that much.
Every crime trend in the history of the country has been multi-causal. There's never just one thing.
Nonetheless, to most observers it feels reasonable to explain the first couple years as reversion to the mean as the unusual pandemic circumstances went away. But as it's gone on it starts to seem like there are probably additional factors pushing it to record lows.
There's no way of knowing if Trump's deportations are due to the decline of "illegal" immigration. Police only clear about half of murders in a given year, so they don't know who committed half of last year's murders. In my experience, "illegal" immigrants are way less likely to commit murder, or any crime for that matter, than people born right here in the United States, someone who's basically walked from Central America is highly motivated to behave, and not be deported, or fall into the clutches of an untrained, rogue police entity like ICE.
"There's no way of knowing if Trump's deportations are due to the decline of "illegal" immigration. "
I'm confused by what you're saying here. I'm putting it the other way: Trump has ramped up deportations and less people are attempting to enter illegally. So Trump's policies have caused a decline in the unauthorized population. Virtually everyone, on all political and academic sides, agree about this. It's not a disputed fact and I could point you to analysis by the Pew Research Center or the Migration Policy Institute that estimate how much it's declined.
I don't think you're following my argument. I'm trying to make the point that illegal immigrants are a low crime group, but partially for different reasons from the ones you're claiming. When they first arrive they are probably not much different from any other group of largely young, mostly male, mostly uneducated people. But after a few years the high-risk, high criminal element among them are deported due to interactions with the legal system. So they may be about the same crime levels as other Americans at first, but low crime after a few years. And the flow of new arrivals has gone to near zero under Trump, so we're no longer getting close to a million new young men every year, and we're much more quickly deporting the already arrived ones who get into even a little bit of trouble.
The crime decline Jeff is documenting is only about 2,600 murders. ICE deported 1,200 immigrants with murder convictions alone last year (and more of other violent categories). There are 15,000,000 or so unauthorized in the country, mainly younger, more male and less educated than the general public, and about 1/3 of them arrived under Biden. It would only take a relatively small fraction of them to be high criminal to have an impact of 1,000 or 2,000 murders.
There's really no reason to rely on anecdotes or speculation when it comes to the relationship between undocumented immigration and crime — it's been studied in some depth.
I'm familiar with this research and it doesn't address my point.
My point is that settled immigrants groups are a filtered population - the high risk individuals have been deported, while new waves may initially bring some segment of high-risk / high-crime individuals that cause trouble until they get deported.
If you don't believe this happens look at how MS-13 and Barrio 18 started. Everyone, even on the Left agrees that criminal deportees from the US can be a bad population. Jamaica and Haiti also blame a large share of their gang problems on deportees from the US.
That paper doesn't address my point because it uses the total numbers of undocumented to as their independent variable. It doesn't break it into new waves (criminals included) and long-settled (criminals long-gone) undocumented populations, and that's the entire idea I'm trying to get across. I don't think you followed.
The trajectory is fairly astounding. I'll be extremely interested in where and among who the reductions are taking place whenever that sort of data is available. Maybe it already is in Jeff's tools somewhere?
You could not tell based on the Copaganda from media establishment. Like an old adage says, “never let the truth get in a way of a good story (or myth).”
Would love to see a ****load fewer murders by ICE, police who say they felt their lives were in danger, and the thousands of needless homicides, accidental killings and suicides due to the proliferation of guns in this country. On the lighter side, we need to keep Dateline Keith, Joe Kenda and all their buddies gainfully employed with, as Norm McDonald used to say, with "murderin' murderers"
I'm more and more beginning to think that the decline of illegal immigration is playing a big role in this story.
The big thing people don't understand about crime is how concentrated it is in a small slice of the population. The same people go back to prison or jail, get released, and then go back again dozens of times. It's plausible that repeat offenders commit over 90% of all serious crime in the USA.
The big thing people don't understand about immigrants and crime is how immigrants don't usually get the chance to become part of that small repeat-offender slice. If you commit a crime, you get deported! Especially under Trump. So immigrants are often an unusually low-crime population after they've been settled, because the repeat offenders that usually cause 90% of the trouble have been removed.
Under Trump, new arrivals of unauthorized immigrants have dropped to record lows, and the older cohorts of settled immigrants are getting aggressively deported for offenses like DUIs, minor assaults, etc... The unauthorized immigrants that are left are more and more the ones who are really good at staying out of trouble.
Tell me you know nothing about either immigration or crime without telling me. In no particular order:
1. There are plenty of immigrant repeat offenders. Most crimes, esp. by repeat offenders, are misdemeanors that do not trigger immediate deportation. Conversely, there are very, very few repeat murderers, so they would not be affected.
2. Immigrants convicted of crimes are not instantly deported; they serve their sentence first, meaning they are still around to be counted in data. The claim about deportations artificially lowering rates is wrong.
3. The share of deportatees with criminal records has plummetted. Prior to this admin, ~70% of deportations came directly out of prisons. Per the admin, in FY25 only 38% had any criminal record at all, to say nothing of a violent record. The drive to increase numbers has led them to target people who don't think they have a reason to hide.
4. The vast, overwhelming majority of cleared homicides happen between native born citizens. The vast majority of uncleared homicides are in areas with fairly low immigrant populations. Combined with known local data about where murders have dropped, it's practically impossible for this to be a meaningful fraction of the drop.
5. Extra deportations are widely known to reduce cooperation with law enforcement, which lowers clearances and thus increases repeat offenses.
If you're gonna make shit up at least try to make it plausible first
>5. Extra deportations are widely known to reduce cooperation with law enforcement, which lowers clearances and thus increases repeat offenses.
No, there's really no actual empirical research backing this. This is one of those leftist shibboleths that gets repeated to make them feel like they have broader motivation behind their beliefs.
Leading with an ad hominem style rebuttal doesn't help your argument or qualifications here.
On #1) You're probably not familiar with the literature on criminal versatility. It's one of the most consistent findings in criminology. Criminals don't specialize. There is a very high correlation between the people who are ticketed for simple assault or speeding one day and then arrested for serious assault or reckless endangerment the next day. "Murdering" isn't a specialized criminal occupation outside of a very rare few hitman. Most killings follow arguments or disputes over money, relationships, etc...
#2) This isn't a counter, this is part of what I'm saying happens. They get deported after serving their sentence so they can't commit another crime in the USA. That's the core portion of my argument, and if you don't follow then you're completely lost. Also, fwiw, under Obama (Secure Communities Act) and in most of the USA today, unauthorized can be detained after simply being arrested while held in jail. And while I'm sure some of those deported that way are innocent, the majority were probably higher-risk persons.
#3) The proportion with convictions have fallen, but not the absolute number of those with convictions. Deportation from jails and for those with convictions have both risen. You're mixing up that the number without convictions has risen faster. In any case, 90% of ICE deportations have been male in Trump's term, likely on average younger males, which by simple demographics make them higher-risk of contributing to crime. That's true of virtually any young male population.
#4) Jeff reported that the drop 2025 to 2026 was equivalent to 2,600 murders. It's not a huge number. Under Biden, roughly 1.5 million new arrivals were coming in the last several years, mostly young males without much education, and that flow has almost stopped. It's not inconceivable that pausing a flow of 1.5M per year of mostly young males could depress murders by several hundred. And as a matter of fact, ICE statistics last year showed 1,200 of their deportees had a murder conviction. This is all well within the ballpark needed.
Also "happen between native born citizens" - first this isn't really well-tracked, but 2nd, again you are missing my point entirely. I know immigrant populations are low-crime, but my entire point is that they only become low-crime because criminal offenders are deported.
#5) Widely reported, not widely known. There aren't good quality studies to report this, and in any case T, U, VAWA and SIJS visa programs are still growing under Trump, so evidently they aren't being depressed that much.
The falling murder rate started 4 years ago so I’d be surprised if it has to with undocumented immigrants.
Every crime trend in the history of the country has been multi-causal. There's never just one thing.
Nonetheless, to most observers it feels reasonable to explain the first couple years as reversion to the mean as the unusual pandemic circumstances went away. But as it's gone on it starts to seem like there are probably additional factors pushing it to record lows.
There's no way of knowing if Trump's deportations are due to the decline of "illegal" immigration. Police only clear about half of murders in a given year, so they don't know who committed half of last year's murders. In my experience, "illegal" immigrants are way less likely to commit murder, or any crime for that matter, than people born right here in the United States, someone who's basically walked from Central America is highly motivated to behave, and not be deported, or fall into the clutches of an untrained, rogue police entity like ICE.
"There's no way of knowing if Trump's deportations are due to the decline of "illegal" immigration. "
I'm confused by what you're saying here. I'm putting it the other way: Trump has ramped up deportations and less people are attempting to enter illegally. So Trump's policies have caused a decline in the unauthorized population. Virtually everyone, on all political and academic sides, agree about this. It's not a disputed fact and I could point you to analysis by the Pew Research Center or the Migration Policy Institute that estimate how much it's declined.
I don't think you're following my argument. I'm trying to make the point that illegal immigrants are a low crime group, but partially for different reasons from the ones you're claiming. When they first arrive they are probably not much different from any other group of largely young, mostly male, mostly uneducated people. But after a few years the high-risk, high criminal element among them are deported due to interactions with the legal system. So they may be about the same crime levels as other Americans at first, but low crime after a few years. And the flow of new arrivals has gone to near zero under Trump, so we're no longer getting close to a million new young men every year, and we're much more quickly deporting the already arrived ones who get into even a little bit of trouble.
The crime decline Jeff is documenting is only about 2,600 murders. ICE deported 1,200 immigrants with murder convictions alone last year (and more of other violent categories). There are 15,000,000 or so unauthorized in the country, mainly younger, more male and less educated than the general public, and about 1/3 of them arrived under Biden. It would only take a relatively small fraction of them to be high criminal to have an impact of 1,000 or 2,000 murders.
There's really no reason to rely on anecdotes or speculation when it comes to the relationship between undocumented immigration and crime — it's been studied in some depth.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6241529/
I'm familiar with this research and it doesn't address my point.
My point is that settled immigrants groups are a filtered population - the high risk individuals have been deported, while new waves may initially bring some segment of high-risk / high-crime individuals that cause trouble until they get deported.
If you don't believe this happens look at how MS-13 and Barrio 18 started. Everyone, even on the Left agrees that criminal deportees from the US can be a bad population. Jamaica and Haiti also blame a large share of their gang problems on deportees from the US.
That paper doesn't address my point because it uses the total numbers of undocumented to as their independent variable. It doesn't break it into new waves (criminals included) and long-settled (criminals long-gone) undocumented populations, and that's the entire idea I'm trying to get across. I don't think you followed.
The trajectory is fairly astounding. I'll be extremely interested in where and among who the reductions are taking place whenever that sort of data is available. Maybe it already is in Jeff's tools somewhere?
You could not tell based on the Copaganda from media establishment. Like an old adage says, “never let the truth get in a way of a good story (or myth).”
BLUF = Burying Lede Unconditionally Faulty
Would love to see a ****load fewer murders by ICE, police who say they felt their lives were in danger, and the thousands of needless homicides, accidental killings and suicides due to the proliferation of guns in this country. On the lighter side, we need to keep Dateline Keith, Joe Kenda and all their buddies gainfully employed with, as Norm McDonald used to say, with "murderin' murderers"