Credit: (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)Former President Donald Trump in a recent interview connected murder rates to undocumented immigrants, insinuating that a person’s criminal nature was part of their “genes.”
His remark was just one of dozens over the last several years that connect immigrants and people of color to crime rates — even though violent crime is dropping nationwide. This type of rhetoric has been leveraged by Trump and other Republican candidates over the last several decades, say criminologists and political scientists.
And this rhetoric is dangerous to communities of color, those experts say, because it stokes racist fears about who perpetrates violent crimes.
“There’s a long history, a long racist history attributing violent behavior to non-whites, especially Black Americans and Latino Americans,” said Lisa Miller, a political science professor at Rutgers University.
One example is when Trump shared a racist rumor about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio on the presidential debate stage in September, said Jason Williams, a justice studies professor at Montclair State University. Trump’s running mate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) then repeated that rumor, which local Republican officials denounced as false.
Targeting ‘Black people in particular’
“This is somewhat of a trademark of the GOP that has been used against all groups — like every group of color at one point in time has been labeled a savage,” said Williams. “But with Black people in particular, somehow insinuating that we’re eating raw animals, [is] a throwback to many of the logics that sustained slavery.”
Crime is a “salient” issue for the American public when they believe it’s a serious issue, said Miller. She looked at political platforms from the 1950s to around 2010 for her book “The Myth of Mob Rule: Violent Crime and Democratic Politics,” which studied how political parties respond to increasing crime rates and how they use crime in their platforms.
“My book showed that people focused on the issues that are most important to them, and if they don’t see crime as serious, and if crime isn’t really affecting them a lot, they’re not easily distracted by [political rhetoric on crime],” said Miller.
The political conditions might be different now, Miller noted, given that politics have become more divisive and that there’s a “resurgence of aspiring authoritarian leaders across Western democracies.” And that hasn’t stopped people from using crime for “political gain,” she said.
Crime, a campaign staple
However, crime has long been discussed on U.S. campaign trails, going back to at least former President Richard Nixon’s campaign. Nixon ran on a “law-and-order” campaign, as one way to appeal to white Southern voters.
“There were a lot of whites, particularly in the southern region, who fell out of love with the Democratic Party because they felt that [the party] was now pandering to the Blacks,” said Williams.
According to a National Institute of Justice-funded study that examined Texas crime data from 2012 to 2018, undocumented immigrants offended at less than half the rate of U.S. native-born citizens.
Democrats have tried to also appear “tough on crime,” say experts. Crime was largely a Republican talking point up until the ’90s when former President Bill Clinton signed his 1994 crime bill, which critics say promoted mass incarceration. That law was a response to “the sentiment that Democrats were weak on crime,” said Saladin Ambar of the Rutgers Eagleton Institute of Politics.
“(P)art of Clinton’s emergence from the [Democratic Leadership Council] was this idea that the party had to tack to the right, and certainly law and order was one of those issues, maybe the issue that was most hurting the party in the election,” said Ambar.
The cost of the rhetoric
There are real and harmful consequences to crime rhetoric and the policies it inspires, say criminal justice experts. After Trump made his comments during the September presidential debate, Haitian immigrants have reported experiencing discrimination. Springfield schools were also closed due to bomb threats.
While hate crimes spiked in 2008 when former President Barack Obama was elected, analysis of FBI data shows that hate crimes have almost doubled since Trump began his first presidential campaign in 2015.
Throughout the 2016, 2020 and 2024 election cycles, Trump and the Republican Party have tried to connect undocumented immigrants to an increase of violent crimes, but data shows otherwise. According to a National Institute of Justice-funded study that examined Texas crime data from 2012 to 2018, undocumented immigrants offended at less than half the rate of U.S. native-born citizens.
This data hasn’t stopped a slew of anti-immigrant pro-Republican ads across the country this year, which depict stories of undocumented immigrants harming white people. Miller say ads like these might not be meant to grab undecided voters.
