How immigration may influence crime rates in the U.S. is a topic of ongoing debate, most prominently in the presidential campaign.
As the election nears, Democrats are taking a firmer position on immigration amid increasing worries about border security. Although conservatives believe that illegal immigration significantly contributes to crime, the reality is more complex.
The Council on Criminal Justice’s group called Centering Justice held an online discussion Tuesday with experts.
Key topics were the marked rise in unlawful immigration during the Biden administration, the elevated crime rates linked to illegal immigrants, and the ineffectiveness of border control in stopping serious offenders.
Ken Cuccinelli, Acting Deputy Secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration, believes that the number of crimes committed, especially those affecting non-immigrants, is a major concern. These crimes could potentially be prevented if immigration laws were properly enforced, he believes.
"We have never enforced them, 100% ever, and I don't expect we ever will, but the difference matters to the quality of life and the safety of American citizens," Cuccinelli said.
Cuccinelli says that while entering the country without authorization is itself a crime, the situation has evolved over the past decade: "... most of the people here illegally came on a legal visa and stayed. Now, most people are crossing into the country illegally and staying."
According to Cuccinelli, the U.S. has added 10 million more illegal immigrants under the Biden administration which he says could have been reduced with better border security or enforcement of immigration laws.
Dara Lind of the American Immigration Council believes that tightening border security won’t necessarily stop unauthorized immigrants from committing crimes, nor will it reduce crime rates.
She said that while enforcement is good at deterring casual offenders, it's less helpful at deterring committed criminals.
"When you increase enforcement, you will deter offending. On the margin, you will especially deter offending among kind of casual offenders," Lind said. "The people who are least likely to deter are the people who are most committed to criminal activity."
Criminologist Charis Kubrin of the University of California Irvine said research shows that undocumented immigrants actually have no effect on the crime rate.
To effectively reduce crime, being overly tough on immigrants won't make a significant difference, research shows. Harsh immigration policies, proposed repeatedly over the years, have not substantially impacted crime rates.
"We should be concerned about crime when it's rising, but the very harsh, restrictive and exclusionary immigration-related policies that have been offered up decade after decade are not going to have much impact on crime, and that's what the research shows," Kubrin said.
Under Vice President Harris, the Democratic Party has changed how it deals with the politics of immigration. "While humanitarianism, openness to migrants, and rolling back restrictive Trump-era policies used to be the Democratic focus, Democrats are locked in on stopping the flow of migrants, limiting asylum, and funding more Border Patrol operations," Vox reports.
The shift is evident in Harris's intention to resurrect a bipartisan border security bill that was opposed by former President Trump.
The bill, which was negotiated this year by President Biden and a bipartisan group of senators, proposed allocating $20 billion for new security measures at the southern border and implementing stricter policies for asylum seekers and other migrants.
Vox says Harris's support for the legislation has come under scrutiny from Trump's campaign, which says that the bill would allocate hundreds of millions of dollars for the construction of a southern border wall, which Harris had previously denounced as "un-American."
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