Rupert Murdoch fired back at Donald Trump’s claims regarding Mexican immigrant crime rates.
“Mexican immigrants, as with all immigrants, have much lower crime rates than native born. Eg El Paso safest city in U.S. Trump wrong,” Murdoch tweeted Sunday.
But the News Corp. mogul’s criticism didn’t prevent the GOP presidential contender from doubling down on his attack on unauthorized immigrants over the weekend, insisting Mexico was deliberately sending its criminals to the U.S. so that they don’t have to pay for them to be kept in jail.
“These people wreak havoc on our population,” Trump told a cheering crowd of about 2,000 people at Saturday’s FreedomFest Libertarian gathering in Las Vegas on Saturday.
But TheWrap researched several studies which have shown no evidence that immigrants (either documented or undocumented) commit more crimes than native-born Americans. In fact, research shows first-generation immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than their American-born counterparts.
A study by the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration organization, showed 1.6 percent of immigrant males ages 18 to 39 were incarcerated, compared to 3.3 percent of American-born males.
According to an article by the Washington Post, of the 78,022 primary offense cases in 2013, about 38.6 percent were committed by unauthorized immigrants. Of them, more than three quarters were related to immigration offenses, not aggravated assaults.
The data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission suggests unauthorized immigrants accounted for 17.6 percent of drug trafficking offenses and 3.8 percent of all sex abuse crimes. About 17 percent of drug crimes were committed by immigrants living in the country illegally.
While that’s no small number, researchers say immigration and crime levels have had an inverse relationship for decades. In other words, as immigration increased, crime has decreased. The belief is that undocumented immigrants are less likely to get into legal trouble because they fear the risk of deportation.
Other surveys seem to corroborate that notion.
A 2013 study by the Center for Investigative Reporting suggests four out of five arrests for drug smuggling involved U.S. citizens, while the Congressional Research Service found that non-citizens make up a smaller percentage of the inmate population in state prisons and jails, compared to their percentage to the total U.S. population.
Trump has said that, if elected, he’ll beef up security along the border with Mexico, building a wall to ensure no unauthorized workers cross into the country.
But a February article by the Houston Chronicle, drug and gang-related arrests along the Texas border have are already on the decline since the state began deploying additional state police and Texas National Guard troops to the southern border in June 2014. Encounters with gang members in the area went down a whopping 38 percent.
Trump’s controversial remarks last month sparked intense fury among many in the Hispanic community as well as other prominent conservatives.
During Trump’s official presidential campaign last month, the GOP candidate alleged that undocumented immigrants crossing the border from Mexico were “people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
The backlash has cost the real-estate mogul at least $50 million in endorsements and deals as high-profile corporations like NBC Universal and Univision quickly served their ties with Trump in an effort to distance themselves from his racially-changed comments.
Mexican immigrants, as with all immigrants, have much lower crime rates than native born. Eg El Paso safest city in U.S. Trump wrong.
— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) July 12, 2015