Over the past four years, nearly 8.7 million migrants have illegally crossed the southern border. This statistic excludes 2.1 million from all other encounters nationwide and an estimated 1.8 million “gotaways” who evaded encounters by law enforcement and are somewhere in our country illegally. Since 2021, several Trump-era border enforcement policies keeping migration at a sustainable and processable level have been repealed, resulting in a projected 274% increase in encounters from the last administration and the highest ever recorded in U.S. history.
With the abrogation of immigration policies aimed at deterrence, prevention, and removal—coupled with executive actions that retroactively extended mass parole and temporary protective status to hundreds of thousands of otherwise inadmissible migrants—there first came a border crisis. In its wake came a national crisis, defined by burgeoning crime, financial burden, and threats to national security.
Let’s first begin with migrant crime—a real issue whose presentation in legacy media has been, at best, a farrago of oversimplifications and factual ignorance. To put in context, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s latest annual report confirmed a surge of 3.7 million illegal migrants in 2021 to currently over 7.4 million in its “non-detained docket,” comprising those caught and released into the U.S. and sanctioned criminals whose incarceration statuses are unknown. At the same time, criminal arrests and convictions dropped from highs of 123,000 in 2019 to lows of 45,000, and the total number of convicted criminals on the non-detained docket rose by over 50% in just the last year. Should we believe the surge in illegal migrants, coupled with plummeting criminal arrests and a swelling number of criminals on the non-detained docket, are mere coincidences with no implication for migrant crime?
In a previous opinion published in The News-Letter, it is cited that since Texas is the “only place that documents crime rate by immigration status” and a Texas report shows “shows that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than natural born citizens,” migrant crime is insubstantial and we are to dismiss the migrant crime as nothing more than “dog-whistling.” I raise three objections to this hasty assertion.
First and foremost is the problem embedded in the piece’s own claim: Why is Texas the only state that documents crime rates by immigration status? Should we not question why before extrapolating that conclusion nationwide or overlooking Governor Greg Abbott’s decisive operation to protect the state from the migrant crisis? New York City, for example, has seen an explosion of migrant crime, but since the city—like other designated “sanctuary” cities—does not (and since the NYPD legally cannot, thanks to disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo) track crime by immigration status, migrant crime is abysmally underreported.
Second, this underreporting is likely exacerbated by the fact that crime, in general, and across the nation, is underreported or simply not reported to the FBI—whose data is chiefly cited in media reports. Furthermore, progressive prosecutors and policies like no bail and criminal justice reform have allowed crime, including migrant crime, to go unpunished, as seen through spikes in recidivism, murders, and—most importantly—national crime victimization rates. In fact, sanctuary jurisdictions are so recalcitrant that they will not even comply with government agencies, like ICE, to detain migrant criminals. So, if you 1) do not arrest criminals, 2) do not prosecute criminals, 3) do not report the statistics, and 4) do not differentiate arrests by immigration status, surely the crime rate shall fall, and we can conveniently dismiss the innumerable cases of illegal migrants committing crimes and acts of violence—hoorah.
The final objection to this conclusion addresses the insinuation often raised in response to concerns about migrant crime: focusing on migrant crimes is a prejudiced double standard. To this, I am convinced that the most effective response is “yes.” Yes, we should raise a double standard for each and every crime committed by individuals who should have never been here in the first place. Yes, we should raise a double standard for victims like Kayla Hamilton, Rachel Morin, and Laken Riley, who should have still been with us, but were all allegedly assaulted and murdered by illegals who should have never been. Yes, we should raise a double standard for real children like those in Nantucket, who were allegedly raped and assaulted by never-apprehended “gotaways.” Yes, it’s about time we raise a double standard to put our law-abiding citizens, immigrants, and asylum seekers above illegal migrants who skipped ahead—an act, not necessarily intent, that mocks our nation, its laws, and its generosity.
Beyond the human cost of the migrant crisis lies the financial: the straining of local budgets and the draining of public resources. While legal immigrants certainly boost the economy, the issue is with illegal migrants; obfuscating this distinction strawmans the debate. Taxpayers spend $182 billion annually on illegal migrants who contribute only $32 billion—a net loss of $150 billion, or $1,156 per taxpayer. To support this increased spending, cities and communities either reallocate resources or raise taxes.
Take the dumpster fire, Chicago—a city with a budget deficit of $982 million. With a chronically underfunded pension system, the city has proposed further spiking property taxes and cutting public services to ameliorate its deficit. At the same time, however, Chicago has shamelessly spent nearly $300 million on migrant services in the last year alone. Even more concerning is that most of that money went to private companies that helped forge lease agreements for migrant shelters.
In New York City, Mayor Adams has admitted the cost of the city’s sanctuary policies is $12 billion and that, if the migrant crisis continues, it “will destroy New York City.” Still, New York City has continued diverting funds from its Department of Homeless Services through $4,000 welfare checks to move migrants out of shelters (relocated from luxury hotels) to find permanent housing at a time when most Americans themselves can’t afford housing.
While it is economically reasonable to concede that the migrant crisis is doing unduly fiscal harm in the short run but argue that losses may be recuperated by GDP (still, not per capita) gains in the long run, it is utterly nihilistic to justify all the illegal and unfair means—especially in the eyes of those Americans, like our homeless veterans, or programs, like FEMA, that could be receiving that funding. Moreover, it is also quite hypocritical to advocate mass migration as a quick-and-dirty remedy for job shortages whilst endorsing the same interventionist policies that distort market incentives and sustain these shortages in the first place.
Lastly is the overarching issue of national security. Over just the last few years, we have seen increasing reports of terrorists and foreign agents being caught after crossing the southern border illegally. Illegal migrants from MS-13 have been arrested in Maryland and Virginia. Illegal migrants from Venezuelan terror gang Tren de Aragua have infiltrated apartment complexes in Colorado and are recruiting members in NYC. Over 400 illegals have been tied to an ISIS-affiliate human smuggling network, and six Russian nationals with ties to ISIS have been arrested in major U.S. cities. And we haven't even begun to mention the China-backed fentanyl smuggling, sex trafficking, and slave labor driven by cartels exploiting the migrant crisis, affecting real people with real stories. Still nothing more than a victimless phenomenon and dog-whistling?
When confronted with these appalling truths of the migrant crisis, its deniers, downplayers, and liberal elites resort to empty sanctimony, regurgitating morally tawdry, salvific platitudes, citing Lady Liberty and patronizing us with the refrain that the United States is a “nation of immigrants.” We sure are. We are also a nation of laws. Illegal migration is wrong not because illegal migrants are all “bad” or “entitled” people but because they broke the law and—to be even more charitable—incentivized by our own government to do so. The United States is a nation built not by illegal migrants enticed by government handouts, bail, or priority status, but rather by legal immigrants who were left to their own—to their own hard work to settle and cultivate deserted lands, to their own merit to build their enterprise, and to their own resolve to manifest their own destiny. This is the America I know. This is the America that values grit over grievance, dignity over entitlement, and integrity over lawlessness.
Aneesh Swaminathan is a sophomore majoring in Molecular and Cellular Biology and Political Science.
