Migrant crime is a “fake problem,” says Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, a pro-migration leader in the Democrat Party.
Murphy told a friendly audience in Connecticut on August 26:
Nobody likes to hear this, but immigrants — first-generation immigrants — and undocumented immigrants both commit crimes at rates lower than natural-born Americans, than people that are born here in this country. So, if you want to live in a safe community, you are actually better off living in a community with people that just got to the United States of America.
Migrants “can in fact lower the crime rate, but it doesn’t help anybody who got killed by illegal aliens,” responded Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
Democrats ignore the death toll from migrants because they want to see migration as an unblemished economic and civic benefit, Krikorian said:
The open migration people hold that view as a almost religious principle … They’re just not able to say that “Immigration has costs and benefits, and on balance, I’m for it [and] I acknowledge that there are costs.”
They can’t say that because immigration has to be an undiluted good [under the] “oppressor-oppressed” calculus that the left bases everything on: Migrants are an oppressed group and therefore morally above reproach.
They just have to take this view [even though] it hurts their their own their own political prospects. This is a ideological, quasi-religious issue for both the left and the libertarians who were now commingled.
Besides, Krikorian added, progressives quietly know “You’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelet.”
Elite Democrats also know that they can insulate themselves from migrant crime, Krikorian said, adding, “You know Chris Murphy doesn’t have to worry about his daughter being killed by an illegal alien like Laken Riley was killed [in 2024].”
On August 26, the Department of Homeland Security announced it had deported another set of criminals, including one from Murphy’s home state of Connecticut:
German Oliverio Miranda-Tapia, a criminal illegal alien from Mexico and Paisas gang member, deported on August 20. His criminal history includes convictions for third-degree sexual assault – intercourse with kin victim less than 16 years old, risk of injury to child, assault, and reckless driving in Connecticut. He illegally entered the United States at an unknown date and location and was deported by the Trump Administration on July 14, 2020. He then illegally re-entered the United States – a felony – at an unknown date and location.
To hide the killing of Americans, Democrats and pro-migration advocates talk about murder rates — not murder numbers — and play up claimed economic benefits for employers and investors.
Many pro-migration groups claim migrants do not change crime rates. For example, pro-migration groups have recently begun touting a report which claims: “We find that neighborhoods that experienced greater increases in the share of undocumented residents saw … no detectable change in [rates of] violent crime.”
The lead author of the study did not respond to questions from Breitbart News in mid-August.
The Cato Institute runs the same rate-based argument, even though its own March 2026 estimate shows that most illegal migrants have higher crime rates than most Americans. For example, Hispanic illegal migrants have a crime rate of 957 per 100,000, which is far higher than the 720 rate of white Americans and the 312 rate of Asians. Other reports show migrant crime at higher rates than reported by Cato.
Still, Cato’s data shows that illegal-migrant Latinos have a lower crime rate per 100,ooo than the descendants of Latino migrants (1,278) and of blacks (3,349). The spike from those two subgroups allows Cato to claim that illegal migrants commit fewer crimes than the average of all American groups.
Many civic groups spotlight the actual numbers of Americans killed by illegal migrants, including the several million migrants admitted by President Joe Biden.
Breitbart News — and American citizens — have carefully covered many of the illegal migrants’ murders, rapes, robberies, DUI killings, and truck disasters that are inflicted on Americans, amid Cato’s claims about crime rates.
Cato uses its focus on crime rate claims to muffle public opposition to its backers’ open-borders demands for more immigrant workers, renters, and consumers.
Cato also claims that migration does not impact the rate of DUI deaths.
However, the number of Americans killed by drunk drivers rose when federal officials chose not to deport illegal migrants before Trump was reelected in 2024. For example, Breitbart News reported in June 20
In May, 26-year-old illegal alien Michael Rosario-Cruz was arrested by the Canadian County Sheriff’s Office [in Oklahoma] and charged with second-degree murder, drunk driving causing bodily injury, possessing a firearm with an altered ID during the commission of a felony, carrying firearms while under the influence, transporting an open container, and driving the wrong way on a one-way road.
According to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, on May 22, 20-year-old Kiercy Hickson, 19-year-old Quincy Jones, 18-year-old Haleigh Salazar, and 18-year-old Brad Palmer were in a vehicle together driving eastbound on Interstate 40 when Rosario-Cruz, driving the wrong way, hit them head-on.
Hickson, Jones, Salazar, and Palmer died at the scene of the crash while Rosario-Cruz was injured and taken to a nearby hospital.
Murphy is so determined to ignore the damage caused by migrants that he uses the migrant murders to justify more migration. “It is true that it frustrates Americans on the left, right, and center when we have a system of immigration that appears lawless, ” he told his audience, before declaring that migrants are damaged by the chaos:
[Among immigrants] you can have your mom or dad or grandmother wait in line [for legalization] for years and years and years, and then somebody comes across the border who doesn’t actually have a legal claim to stay in the United States and gets to be here for years! That’s the problem we should solve … I spent almost six months [in 2024] crafting the most significant bipartisan immigration reform bill, border security bill, in a generation. Donald Trump singularly stopped that bill from passing, but that work is still worth doing.
Murphy’s secretly drafted bill died when Senators realized it would have dramatically expanded migration into the United States, so imposing even more economic harm and civic chaos on ordinary Americans.
Murphy’s “fake problem” gaffe, however, also helps establishment Republicans to shift public debate away from migration’s economic impact, over to migration’s criminal impact.
“Republicans who want to keep the illegal alien inflow will often focus on border issues or crime issues as a way of either consciously distracting attention,” said Krikorian.
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