'Migrant crime wave' not supported by data, despite high-profile cases

Over the past month, New York police have described alarming crimes involving young men living in the city's migrant shelters.

A 15-year-old boy, police said, shot at an officer in Times Square and struck a tourist. Two officers were kicked and punched on West 42nd Street. A Venezuelan man oversaw a gang of criminals who rode mopeds and took wallets and cellphones from more than 60 people, most of whom were women walking alone.

During a police raid last week in the Bronx, Mayor Eric Adams, wearing a bulletproof vest over a Fendi scarf, joined officers as they arrested five people accused of carrying out the robbery. “A wave of migrant crime is sweeping across our city,” Police Commissioner Edward Caban told reporters hours later.

Some of the crimes were captured on videos that have since gone viral, prompting Republican politicians and their allies to say migrant criminals are besieging New York.

Quantifying crimes committed by migrants is nearly impossible because police are not allowed to ask about a suspect's immigration status, said Kenneth Corey, a former head of the department who retired in 2022. But police data indicate there has been no increase in crime. since April 2022, when Texas Governor Greg Abbott began sending buses of migrants to New York to protest the federal government's border policies.

More than 170,000 migrants have arrived in the city since then, and it's difficult to predict what crime statistics would be like if they hadn't come. But as migrant numbers have increased, the overall crime rate has remained the same. And in fact, many major crime categories — including rape, murder and shootings — have declined since April 2022, an analysis of monthly statistics from the New York Police Department shows.

The monthly number of robberies has fluctuated since the migrants arrived in large numbers. It peaked at 1,730 in July 2022, hit a low of 1,155 in February 2023 and climbed to 1,417 last month.

Major thefts have also gone up and down, but the monthly total was 4,056 in January, down from a high of 4,687 in August 2022.

Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said there was no discernible surge in immigrant crime.

“I would interpret a 'wave' as something important, meaningful and a departure from the norm,” he said. “So far they have been individual crime incidents.”

Still, immigrants staying in shelters said they had felt a sense of hostility in recent weeks. On subway cars, they said, people slide forward to avoid sitting too close to them or making rude comments under their breath.

“They say things in English that you don't understand, but you can tell it's bad,” Ezequiel Velásquez, a 22-year-old Venezuelan, said in Spanish outside the Row NYC hotel in Times Square, where a migrant shelter is situated. .

Because of recent crimes, he said, people see all migrants the same way: “violent.”

Days after the officers were attacked in Times Square, a man stood in front of Row NYC and shouted profanities, said Marcela López, a 38-year-old migrant from Colombia. She couldn't understand him, but her 11-year-old son translated.

“Immigration bastard,” the man had said.

Police have not provided statistics to back up Commissioner Caban's claim of a wave of migrant crime referred questions to a Feb. 5 news conference in which police officials announced the raid in the Bronx and listed a litany of other crimes likely committed by migrants. Officials at the news conference described a rise in robberies by men on mopeds – a source of transportation and employment for many newcomers – since the arrival of migrants. Calls related to domestic violence in shelters, pickpockets, shoplifting and reports of human trafficking were also reported.

Joseph Kenny, the head of detectives, said mopeds were used in 32 different patterns of robberies in the first five weeks of the year (a 'pattern' refers to several similar crimes committed by one person or a group of people). There was only one such pattern during the same period last year, he said.

Police said they have also been investigating groups of Venezuelan immigrants who they believe are involved in more sophisticated thefts, such as hacking into stolen phones and using people's identification to drain their bank accounts.

It's not surprising that a sudden influx of tens of thousands of people would also include criminals or criminal behavior, said James Essig, the department's former chief of detectives.

“Any group that comes in, where you have unemployed people, young men hanging out in the corners, they're going to get themselves into trouble,” he said.

Mr. Corey, the former department head, said even a small percentage of immigrants engaging in criminal behavior could cause an increase in crime and reduce people's sense of security.

“The bigger question is why would we allow people who are clearly involved in criminal activity – and we're not talking about a young mother stealing formula to feed her baby – why would we allow them to stay here? ” said Mr. Corey.

Some lawmakers have called for repealing a city law that bars police officers from honoring detention requests from immigration authorities without an order from a federal judge.

In describing crimes committed by migrants, officials have largely limited themselves to anecdotes and videos that are well publicized. At the February press conference, officials showed a woman being dragged away by a thief on a moped. Following the attack on two Times Square police officers late last month, the department released a short clip of the attack, leading to the charges against about six men. The story quickly became a staple on Fox News.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg later released longer footage of the attack, which showed the officers initiated the encounter and aggressively ordered the men to move on before pulling one of them aside after he appeared to shout an insult at police. The argument started after the man resisted.

The focus on certain crimes has created a false sense of chaos and insecurity that threatens law-abiding immigrants, said Ana María Archila, co-director of the Working Families Party, which has ties to unions and community organizations. She noted the Feb. 6 attack by the Guardian Angels on a man the anti-crime group mistook for a Venezuelan immigrant. The attack occurred just as the group's leader, Curtis Sliwa, was being interviewed live on Fox News nearby.

“If you look at the history of immigration, you see very clearly that waves of migration are accompanied by declining crime rates,” Ms Archila said. “It is also true that waves of migration have been met with racist, xenophobic rhetoric.”

In 2023, researchers at Stanford University discovered that immigration were imprisoned at lower rates than people born in the United States. In 2020, this was noted in a study by Princeton University undocumented immigrants in Texas tended to have fewer felony arrests than legal residents.

Mayor Adams, who said in September that the migrant crisis would “destroy New York City,” has softened his tone somewhat.

“Any New Yorker who views those trying to achieve their next step in the American dream as criminals is wrong,” he told reporters on the day of the Bronx attack. “That's not what we see.”

On Monday, the city announced a curfew from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. for migrant shelters. The decision was described as an effort to bring policies at migrant shelters in line with those of traditional homeless shelters, where curfews have been in place for years, said Kayla Mamelak, a spokeswoman for Mr. Adams.

“This policy will enable more efficient capacity management,” she said.

Ms Mamelak said the curfew had nothing to do with the spate of crimes.

On Monday in Manhattan's East Village, a line of migrants waited outside St. Brigid School, a former Catholic school, where city workers were handing out temporary housing assignments.

The scene was serene. Groups of men chatted on benches with their suitcases within reach, or played football in nearby Tompkins Square Park. One man used electric clippers to cut migrants waiting in line.

Josè Rodriguez, 32, who immigrated to New York from Caracas, Venezuela, 10 months ago, said he waited outside St. Brigid for three days to try to get a housing assignment.

Shortly after he arrived in the city, his moped was stolen in the Bronx. He reported the crime to the police, but they couldn't find it.

Still, he said he felt safer in New York than he ever did in Venezuela, where he was arrested for expressing anti-government views. When he heard about the 15-year-old's shooting in Times Square, he felt fear.

“That's terrible for us,” he said. “Most of us come here for a good life.”

Chelsia Rose Marcius And Hurubie Meko reporting contributed. Susan C. Beachy research contributed.