Without evidence, Trump claims sanctuary cities are ‘death traps’
“No more Sanctuary Cities! They protect the Criminals, not the Victims. They are disgracing our Country, and are being mocked all over the World. Working on papers to withhold all Federal Funding for any City or State that allows these Death Traps to exist!!!”
- President Donald Trump, in a social media post, April 10
Trump signaled that he will soon take the legally dubious step of denying federal funds to sanctuary cities, claiming that they are “death traps.” He attempted to do something similar in his first term, but his executive order was blocked by the courts, Now, apparently he will take another stab at it.
This is one of Trump’s policies that is largely based on anecdotes – a horrific crime committed by an undocumented immigrant who was released from custody without the Homeland Security Department being notified so the person could be deported. Each individual case may be heartbreaking and infuriating, but that does not mean that sanctuary cities are inherently more dangerous – or, as Trump put it in his first term, “breed crime.”
We looked for studies that might shed light on this issue – and asked the White House to produce studies to confirm Trump’s claim. Here are our findings.
The Facts
Under the Biden administration, the number of undocumented immigrants grew substantially. As of mid-2023, the Migration Policy Institute, a D.C. think tank that does research and analysis to improve immigration and integration policies, estimated from a U.S. census survey that there are 13.7 million undocumented immigrants. That indicates a sharp jump from a steady, years-long estimate of about 11 million people before the pandemic, the group said in a February report.
As we have noted before, there is little evidence (though the data is slim) that immigrants – or even undocumented immigrants – cause more crime. But a surge like that is obviously going to contain some bad apples.
Meanwhile, there’s no official definition of “sanctuary,” but it generally refers to rules restricting state and local governments from alerting federal authorities about people who may be in the country illegally. Immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility, and state and local law enforcement can decide how much they want to cooperate with the federal government for immigration enforcement. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which supports stricter immigration limits and a merit-based immigration system, lists 13 states and dozens of cities and counties as “having laws, ordinances, regulations, resolutions, policies, or other practices that obstruct immigration enforcement and shield criminals.”
The Congressional Research Service, in a 2019 report, said sanctuary policies generally fall into three baskets: “don’t enforce” policies that bar state or local police from assisting federal immigration authorities; “don’t ask” policies that bar certain state or local officials from inquiring into a person’s immigration status; and “don’t tell” policies that restrict information-sharing between state or local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.
The reasons vary as to why a state or local agency decides not to alert Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when a noncitizen convicted of a crime is being released. Some fear that victims and potential witnesses may not come forward to report crimes if they are afraid of being reported to federal authorities for their immigration status. Others cite dwindling local and state law enforcement resources.
But political scientists, criminologists, sociologists and economists, taking different methodological approaches, have consistently been unable to find evidence that sanctuary city policies increase crime.
Among the studies:
– A 2017 study examined similar cities with and without sanctuary policies, using FBI city-level crime data to see how violent- and property-crime rates changed after sanctuary policies were adopted, and found “no statistically discernible difference in violent crime, rape, or property crime rates across the cities.”
– A 2017 review of existing literature found a “null” or negative relationship between sanctuary policies and crime.
– A 2020 study examined the impact of sanctuary policies on deportations, examining roughly 300 U.S. counties, about half of which had sanctuary policies. It found that while such policies reduced deportations by one-third, they did not reduce deportations of people with violent criminal convictions. It also found that sanctuary policies had no measurable effect on crime.
– A 2021 study investigated whether the adoption of sanctuary policies causes a change in crime rates for a city, comparing five years before the policy was adopted and five years afterward. It found no effect on robbery or homicide rates, but found a decrease in property crimes.
“I think the literature is clear on this: There’s no good evidence, or reason to believe, that sanctuary policies increase crime,” said David Hausman of Berkley Law School, author of the 2020 study. He said one reason is that the deportations are relatively small compared to the scale of crimes being committed.
His paper noted that even if one assumed every one of the approximately 22,300 people whose deportations were prevented by sanctuary policies between 2013 and 2015 went on to commit a property crime, that would have led to approximately 22,300 additional property crimes in sanctuary jurisdictions in that period. But there were at least 4,391,667 property crimes in those counties during this period, meaning that at most even this extreme example would have increased property crime by only 0.5 percent.
But this would be an absurd assumption. A 2014 ICE report found that while 62 percent of roughly 8,100 released offenders had a prior criminal history, 73 percent had no subsequent criminal arrest.
Of course, that still means more than one-quarter went on to commit crimes, many repeatedly. The report said the most common crimes involved illegal drugs, driving under the influence, traffic offenses, stolen vehicles and arson. There were six high-profile crimes, such as sexual abuse of a child and felony robbery – the types of attacks that earn headlines and impact policy.
Even after the surge in illegal immigration, the number of prevented deportations is still relatively low. Between January 2021 and July 2024, sanctuary jurisdictions released 22,040 jailed criminal noncitizens that ICE sought to take into custody for deportation, according to ICE records obtained by CIS.
In response to our query, a White House official sent The Fact Checker links to several citations, none of which were peer-reviewed studies and most of which were anecdotal. They also did not confirm Trump’s claim that sanctuary cities are “death traps.”
But John R. Lott Jr., author of one of the articles sent to us, argues that available data undercounts crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. Using figures released last summer by ICE about the known criminal records of non-detained noncitizens, he estimated that 9 percent of the 7.4 million released noncitizens committed crimes either in the United States or in their home countries, which he says is a conservative estimate but high relative to the rest of the U.S. population.
He reviewed the papers we cited above and said they did not account for inadequacies in the data. FBI reports, for instance, miss many incidents of violent crime and property crime because not all of those crimes are reported.
“None of these papers directly address the empirical problem that criminals tend to commit crimes against people who are similar to themselves,” Lott said. “That means that illegals will commit crimes against other illegals who are living near them. The problem is that crime by illegals is likely to be unreported, and as you have more illegals in the area, the size of that underreporting is likely to increase.”
The Pinocchio Test
Trump claims sanctuary cities are “death traps.” On that basis, he is prepared to issue an order denying federal funds to jurisdictions that limit cooperation with the federal immigration authorities, even though the individual policies can vary greatly.
But the available research shows no statistically significant impact of sanctuary policies on crime – and even a possible decrease in property crime. That doesn’t mean that horrific crimes can result from the release of criminal noncitizens. And, as always, there are limitations in the data that may make it difficult to clearly determine the impact of sanctuary policies.
Trump can raise concerns about sanctuary policies, but he has no evidence that sanctuary cities are less safe than non-sanctuary cities. He earns Three Pinocchios.