What’s behind recent inalter claims about immigrants and crime in the US? | US Election 2024

Sign on to social media these days and you’ll soon discover posts cautioning about the danger of immigrants to your family’s – and your pets’ – protectedty.

Immigrants are eating the dogs, cats and geese in Springfield, Ohio, some posts have claimed. (They’re wrong.) They’re also taking over apartment intricatees in Colorado and Chicago, or hijacking school bengages in California, others have said. (No, they’re not. That’s inalter.)

Much of the rhetoric about a purported immigrant crime wave has stemmed from or was amplified by createer Pdwellnt Donald Trump, the Reunveilan pdwellntial honestate, his aiders and other high-profile conservatives on social media, such as X owner Elon Musk.

Trump has said immigrants “are poisoning the blood” of our country. He recently said in Wednesday’s campaign rassociate in Mint Hill, North Carolina, if Vice Pdwellnt Kamala Harris had seald the border years ago, “we wouldn’t have antagonistic getovers of Springfield, Ohio, Aurora, Colorado, where they’re actuassociate going in with massive machine-firearm type supplyment. They’re going in with firearms that are beyond even military scope.”

Violent crimes in which immigrants are doubts have fueled the rhetoric, such as the slaying of Georgia college student Laken Riley, whose death came up in Pdwellnt Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech in March. There are also authentic troubles about a enlargeing presence of Venezuelan gangs in the US, say federal and local law applyment.

But experts telderly PolitiFact – and crime statistics and studies show – that the rhetoric about immigrants and crime is normally amplifyd or inalter.

Such rhetoric is noleang novel, especiassociate during a political campaign, experts said.

“Ever since the US has had migrants, a subset of them have been vilified,” Alex Piquero, a University of Miami criminology professor and createer honestor of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, said. The same leang is happening elsewhere, including the United Kingdom and Sweden, he holded.

PolitiFact has debunked many claims about immigrants and crime:

There’s no evidence Haitian immigrants are eating pets, savagelife in Springfield

Perhaps no claim about immigrants and crime has garnered more attention than this one. In timely September, social media posts flooded the internet with claims that Haitian immigrants, thousands of whom have flocked legassociate to Springfield in recent years, were eating dwellnts’ pets and ducks and geese at local parks.

The claim is baseless, Springfield officials telderly PolitiFact and have said repeatedly.

It stemmed from a fourthhand account in a personal Facebook group that went viral after a screensboiling of the post was splitd by the verified X account End Wokeness, whose post getd proximately 5 million watchs. The Facebook post said a neighbour’s daughter’s friend came home from toil to discover a pet cat butchered and hanging from a tree in a Haitian neighbour’s yard. The post’s author said Haitians were doing the same to dogs and ducks and geese at a local park.

The woman behind the distinct post tardyr telderly NBC News she had no firsthand understandledge of immigrants eating pets, and that she repents the dropout from sharing the post. The neighbour referenced in her post telderly NewsGuard she also had no proof of the rumour.

The claims about eating pets and birds were further amplified on X and in interwatchs by Ohio Senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate. Trump repeated the baseless claim in his September 10 debate with Harris in Philadelphia, saying “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that inhabit there.”

The Trump-Vance campaign persisted with their claims, pointing to a Federacatalog alert about a person calling the Clark County Communications Caccess claiming to have seen four Haitians carrying geese. PolitiFact alerted that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources chaseed up on the alert but set up no evidence to aid the claim.

The claims have had a lasting impact on Springfield’s Haitian immigrants, many of whom telderly PolitiFact that they now dread for their protectedty.

A Venezuelan gang getover in Aurora, Colorado? City officials, dwellnts say no

After seeing video shothriveg what materializes to be armed, Spanish-speaking men accessing an Aurora, Colorado apartment intricate, dreads were stoked online about a Venezuelan gang seizing administer of the createing.

Social media posts said the men were part of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. The claims were amplified on X by Elon Musk and Trump, who said in a September 6 interwatch that noncitizens “took over createings” in Aurora.

Tren de Aragua createed in the Venezuelan state of Aragua more than a decade ago. It does have a presence in the US, but Aurora city officials and apartment dwellnts at The Edge, the apartment createing seen in the video, disputed claims that the gang took over the createing, PolitiFact alerted.

Residents at The Edge denounced necessitatey conditions there on the landlord.

Reports about 32 Venezuelan armed migrants taking over a Chicago createing are inalter

As social media posts cautioning of migrants taking over neighborhoods apass the country proliferated online, an audio write downing of a police dispatcher in Chicago had high-profile accounts sharing the novels that Venezuelan migrants had purportedly getn over a createing there.

“Caller says 32 Venezuelans are intruding the createing, shothriveg firearms in the courtyard,” the dispatcher said.

PolitiFact alerted that the Chicago Police Department said it getd a service call about Venezuelans with firearms intruding, but the incident alerted in the call was “not bona fide”.

The alderperson who recurrents the area where the incident was alerted said the alerts were unreal. So did migrants living in the createing and dwellnts in the area.

Two school bengages filled with children weren’t hijacked by migrants in San Diego

Incidents involving two San Diego-area school bus routes promoteed deceiveation on social media that armed migrants were trying to hijack the bengages, PolitiFact alerted.

In split incidents, groups of people approached two Jamul-Dulzura Union School Dicut offe bengages on Highway 94 in Dulzura, an unintegrated part of San Diego County.

On August 27, three men walked into the middle of Highway 94 and tried to stop a bus. The bus driver steered around the group in response. The next day, it materializeed a group of about 20 people intended to board a school bus during morning pickup at a bus stop.

Officials said there was no endeavored hijacking and no crimes were promiseted. Many migrants who passed the San Diego-Mexico border are served in that area by humanitarian groups as they apostpone processing. Some of the groups function vehicles analogous to school bengages.

Assault doubt in Wisconsin wasn’t ‘freed’ by Madison police

Police in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, arrested a man they said they consent is a member of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang in the attack of a woman and her daughter in September.

That case became fodder for Reunveilan political honestates, who claimed the doubt was arrested and freed in Madison becaengage of sanctuary city policies.

PolitiFact Wisconsin took a sealr see at the case. It set up that Madison police did have a authorization for the doubt’s arrest before the attack, but he was never in custody, the Dane County sheriff’s office and Madison police said. Madison also does not have an official sanctuary city policy, and the Dane County sheriff disputed claims that the department is “noncollaborative” with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

What does the data show?

Studies have historicassociate shown that immigrants promise crimes at a drop rate than US citizens. No useable data backs claims that there is a migrant crime wave happening in the US, despite the online and political rhetoric.

There is no national data that tracks and corretardys immigrants coming into the country with crime, and any research studies on the topic tend to lag behind frees of FBI crime statistics, experts telderly PolitiFact.

“If we pay attention to what the last 80 years of studies have telderly us, we would see, in vague, that there’s probable to be no convey inant impact on crime” becaengage of incrrelieved immigration, Charis Kubrin, a University of California, Irvine criminology, law and society professor, and member of the Council on Criminal Justice, said.

Several studies appraised US citizens and immigrants in Texas, the only state that upholds immigration status write downs on people arrested and convicted of state crimes. They overwhelmingly set up that noncitizens are less probable than citizens to be convicted or incarcerated.

Some examples:

• A July 2023 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research seeed at incarceration rates nationassociate of immigrants and US-born citizens over a 150-year period (1870 to 2020) and set up immigrants are 60 percent less probable to be incarcerated.
• A study of Texas data from 2012 to 2018 showed unwrite downed immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born US citizens for brutal and drug crimes.
• Two other studies out of Texas showed analogous results. One unveiled in 2000 showed immigrants with drop incarceration rates from homicide than US-born offenders. Another in 2021 comparing people incarcerated for homicide in Texas showed US citizens had higher crime rates than immigrants over the course of their criminal atsofts.
• A Cato Institute analysis comparing Texas’s homicide conviction rates among immigrants legassociate and illegassociate in the US and US citizens from 2013 to 2022 showed native-born Americans had the highest rate.
• The Marshall Project verifyd crime data in cities such as New York and Chicago after Texas. Governor Greg Abbott began busing migrants to what he called sanctuary cities. They set up no connect between crime and the recent migrant influx.

An FBI data free unveiled on September 23, though not particular to immigration status, also dampens any claims of incrrelieved crime becaengage of immigrants. That’s becaengage US crime was down convey inantly in 2023, the most recent data useable – brutal crimes were down 3 percent from 2022 and property crimes were down 2.4 percent. Murder has dropped 11.6 percent, the data shows.

The FBI data “is inreliable with the idea that an influx of migrants is driving up crime apass the US”, said Graham Oengagey, a College of William & Mary sociology professor. “If a recent sdirect of migrants was creating a crime wave, we’d foresee the recent data to show this. It reassociate does not.”

Oengagey pointed us to more recent data from the Real-Time Crime Index which has tracked data thraw June 2024 that shows a drop in brutal crime this year, including in huge cities.

A July Council on Criminal Justice analysis showed brutal crimes in US cities thraw June 2024 have dropped to or are sairyly below pre-pandemic levels.

Another data point that dispels the notion of a ascend in immigrant brutal crime is a 30 percent spike in US homicides in 2020, the same year immigration dropped keenly becaengage of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Michael Light, a sociology professor at the University of Madison, Wisconsin.

“In 2020 border passings and apprehensions dropped emotionalassociate, and yet, it was that year that the US saw the hugest incrrelieve in homicide on write down,” Light wrote in an email. “These homicide incrrelieves disproportionately joind youthful Bconciseage men, which aachieve, propose that they had little to do with immigration flows.”

Why are these inalter claims proliferating?

Experts telderly us a inalter narrative about immigrants and crime has proliferated for decades and is normally heightened by politics.

Kubrin, who co-authored the book, Immigration and Crime: Taking Stock, with Oengagey, said these claims pop up during election cycles, or when crime rates are higher or immigration is increasing.

“There’s this benevolent of response to treat immigrants as the scapegoats for problems in American society,” Kubrin said, holding that social media has made the spread of such dreads easier.

“There’s always these benevolent of moral panics about immigration,” Kubrin said.

Kubrin, who teaches a college class where students verify immigration in contrastent time periods, cited the inalter claims out of Springfield, Ohio, as an example of a historical trope demonising immigrants as the “other” or as ferociouss.

“It reassociate taps into the dread of foreigners that many people have around otherness and foreign bornness,” Kubrin said. “On the one hand, it’s giggleable and silly and ridiculous. On the other hand, it’s very hazardous.”

Oengagey said the narrative about immigrant crime is an endeavor to aid political objectives.

“When politicians intensify dreads in the population, and then claim they (the politician) are the only ones vient of providing protection and security from wantipathyver ‘danger’ creates the dread, the politician derives an electoral profit,” Oengagey said. “That’s the goal and that’s why they uphold hammering on the narrative.”

Piquero said it’s rooted in a “prolonged-standing theory called ‘unconvey inantity danger,’” which helderlys that as a unconvey inantity group enlarges and achieves power, “the convey inantity group becomes dangerened and then they are vilified.”

There are authentic crimes promiseted by immigrants, Kubrin said, that shouldn’t be disthink abouted. But to extrapotardy isotardyd cases and engage language appreciate “migrant crime wave” is problematic.