Committee Testimony on Immigration and Threats to Law Enforcement
This is the five-minute spoken summary of my written testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee’s December 10, 2024, hearing, titled “Given the Green Light: Open Border Policies and Threats to Law Enforcement.”
Chairman, ranking member, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify.
For nearly half a century, the Cato Institute has produced original research showing that in a free society, people—whatever their background, ancestry, or birthplace—are directed toward activities that benefit mankind.
As they have for centuries, America’s new immigrants are contributing to our success, working for us and with us to build a stronger, wealthier, and safer country.
But immigrants are people, and in any large group, some people will commit crimes. Is mass deportation the answer?
No, mass deportation would make Americans—including law enforcement—less safe.
In 2023, immigrants, legal and illegal, were half as likely to have committed crimes serious enough for them to be incarcerated in the US.
Data from Texas show that in 2022, the average illegal immigrant was 36 percent less likely to commit and be convicted of murder. Legal immigrants were even less likely.
Not surprisingly, crime rates and murder rates have been shown to fall in response to immigration.
In my written testimony, I show that homicides have fallen in 83 percent of the 72 cities receiving most of the new illegal immigrants from January 2021 to June 2024.
Cities with more new illegal immigrants were slightly more likely to see a decline in homicides.
Salt Lake City was the top city for immigration court filings as a percentage of its population, and its murders fell 53 percent—twice as fast as the national average.
Cato also reviewed every instance of a law enforcement officer being shot and killed in the line of duty in 2024, finding no illegal immigrant shooters.
We looked at every NYPD officer killed for the last decade—again, no illegal immigrant killers. In fact, immigrants were more likely to be killed serving as NYPD officers than they were to kill NYPD officers.
We shouldn’t be surprised by these findings. Immigrants are more likely to be engaged in activities not associated with crime, such as working, starting businesses, marrying, having kids, attending church, and avoiding drugs.
Mass deportation would remove a population less likely to commit serious crimes, which would increase the crime rate and victimization rate for Americans and US law enforcement.
But let’s just suppose I’m wrong, and immigrants are more likely to commit crimes.
Mass deportation would still harm public safety. Mass deportation means indiscriminate enforcement.
It means targeting both threats and peaceful people. It deprioritizes serious offenders.
We saw how that played out during four years of Trump, who removed the requirement to target criminals on his first week in office.
He doubled arrests of noncriminals—pizza delivery drivers, domestic violence victims, and spouses of US citizens.
He released these criminals, many with violent histories, while Immigration and Customs Enforcement released twice as many convicted criminals as Biden has.
Trump separated families and prosecuted parents, which US attorneys said allowed sex offenders to go free.
When you’re only interested in deporting as many people as possible, you’ll downplay public safety.
As a result, the number of criminals trying to enter illegally tripled to record highs under Trump.
The threat of mass deportation won’t deter criminals. But it would threaten immigrant victims and witnesses who work with law enforcement to stop and solve crimes.
Let me be clear: When noncitizens victimize people in the US, their welcome is over. Even one such instance is too many.
That’s why law enforcement should be laser-focused on those threats.
Don’t ignore illegal immigration. Fix it. But rather than mass deportation, what we need is legal immigration.
Create legal ways for peaceful people to apply, get vetted, and live here legally.
Then, cops can be cops and focus on threats to public safety. That’s something we can all agree on.
Thank you.
