Migrant crime is politically charged, but the reality is more complicated
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Police arrest an alleged thief, not shown, on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, New York. The neighborhood has seen a jump in robbery over the past year. Many residents blame migrants, but this suspect was American.Martin Kaste / NPR -
Jose Villalobos used to work for the Central Bank of Venezuela. Now he sells snacks in Queens and says his countrymen are getting a bad rap.Martin Kaste / NPR -
Johnny Velasquez says the arrival of migrants has coincided with rising crime in his home neighborhood, but police analysts say migrants may be targets for American-born perpetrators.Martin Kaste / NPR -
Police officers from other precincts have been brought in to patrol Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, where robbery is up more than 40% in the first four months of this year compared with the same period last year.Martin Kaste / NPR -
A Venezuelan migrant gets a haircut in the street outside the Roosevelt Hotel, New York's biggest migrant shelter, a block from Grand Central Terminal.Martin Kaste / NPR
It's no surprise immigration is a hot political issue this year, as the number of foreign-born people in the United States reaches record levels and waves of migrants throng the southern border applying for asylum. What's less clear is why candidates are campaigning on the issue of migrant crime.
Donald Trump and the Republicans have highlighted cases such as the killing of nursing student Laken Riley in February, allegedly by a migrant from Venezuela.
"That could have been my daughter. It could have been yours," Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama said in the Republican response to President Biden's State of the Union address.
But national statistics show no sign of a migrant-driven crime wave. Violent crime is trending down, after the spikes of 2020-2021, even as migration has surged. Past studies have found immigrants to be less likely to commit crimes. While it's possible the newer arrivals are contributing to crime rates, it's nearly impossible to tell how much, as the FBI's statistics aren't parsed by immigration status.
Still, at the local neighborhood level, some see a problem.
"Unfortunately, crime is up," Carlos Chaparro says in Spanish. He runs a vocational school on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, New York. It's a traditionally Latin American neighborhood that has become a magnet for many of the approximately 190,000 migrants who've come through New York in the last two years.
"My clients say that when they leave [the school] at night, they're being attacked and mugged, increasingly in the last year," he says.
NPR talked to more than 20 people along this commercial strip, and they all said their impression was that crime has gone up in the last year. It's a trend that is reflected in the statistics. According to the New York City Police Department's CompStat system, crime in this precinct is up more than 15% in the first four months of this year compared with the same period last year, while it's down in the city as a whole. Robbery is up more than 40% in the first four months of this year compared with the same period last year.
"It happens a lot," says Johnny Velasquez, as he comes from his night shift as a security guard in Manhattan. Like Chaparro, he says there has been a lot more theft in the neighborhood lately — especially the grab-and-run kind.
"It's an everyday thing. People on the scooters, like driving by while you're on the phone, they'll take it. Every day, you walk here, you don't know what's gonna happen," he says.
Velasquez, Chaparro and others on the street blame the influx of newcomers.
"A lot of them [are] standing in front of the store selling lollipops to make a living," Velasquez says, but "there's other ones that come here for the wrong reasons."
Velasquez just witnessed an attempted street theft — a man tried to grab a backpack, but his victim fought back and the suspect was struggling with police just 10 feet away. But in this case, the apparent thief is American, and the victim is a migrant — a young man from Ecuador who'd been trying to fix the wheel on his scooter when he was attacked.
Jack Donohue, who worked for the NYPD for 32 years and is now a senior fellow at the Center on Policing at Rutgers University, calls the rise in crime in that neighborhood "substantial," but he says you can't automatically blame the migrants.
"It's a question of what's happening and dissecting it. Not just the occurrence, but who gets arrested for it, would shed a little light on what dynamics are in play there," Donohue says.
The available statistics don't shed much light, though. Neither the NYPD nor the mayor's office would talk to NPR for this story.
Meanwhile, the question of migrant crime in New York City has become politically charged, as local news reports focus on migrants accused of attacking police and participating in organized theft rings.
Most alarming to some are the dire news stories about a violent new gang.
Tren de Aragua is a Venezuelan prison gang that has spread to other South American countries, and there have been reports of migrants in the U.S. sporting the gang's tattoos.
But Steven Dudley, an expert on Latin American gangs and co-director of the research group InSight Crime, says there's a difference between the arrival of migrants with ties to a gang and the arrival of the gang itself.
"You may see individuals connected to Tren de Aragua that may commit crimes on their own. But that doesn't mean that Tren de Aragua as a criminal organization is operational," Dudley says. "For us to consider Tren de Aragua operational in the United States, they would need to be active in a collective manner, committing crimes in a collective manner over a period of time."
He adds that migrants with "ties" to the gang may be coming to the U.S. to get away from the gang.
Carolina Reyna says she's worried about regular street crime. She lives in New York's largest migrant shelter, the Roosevelt Hotel near Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. She says the constant police presence there makes her feel safe, but she says she's no longer willing to go to the Latin American neighborhood in Queens — not since she was mugged there coming home from her job at a bar.
"The boy stabbed me on the left side, in the breast," she says. She says the kid had an Ecuadorian accent. "It's way too dangerous around there," she says. "There are people who are doing things that don't fit with why we came to this country."
Police took her to the hospital and told her there is security video of the attack. But since February, the case has gone cold.
While the NYPD wouldn't speak to NPR on the record, police say privately that the real problem is not that migrants commit more crimes. It's that those who do are difficult to find and prosecute.
"Making cases against the migrants, it's just very frustrating," says Christopher Flanagan, a retired NYPD detective who was commander for major cases. He says that migrants typically don't have the local roots and associations that investigators rely on and that there's often no criminal record available from the country of origin.
"They're going in with no information, very few avenues to identify people," he says. And if they do make an arrest, "they have very little confidence that the person's going to be present in court."
Venezuelans working along Roosevelt Avenue in Queens say those who commit crimes and get away are making it harder for the rest of the migrants.
"You have to enforce the law against them," Jose Villalobos says. He has been in the U.S. for five years and has worked jobs ranging from parking cars to selling snacks — which he does now under a tent draped with a Venezuelan flag. In his home country, he used to have a job with the central bank calculating the inflation rate until he was forced out for political reasons. Now that he's making his way in the U.S., he thinks his countrymen are getting a bad rap from other Latin Americans in the neighborhood.
"They say, 'Here come the criminals,' but no, we're not all like that. We've come to work and do good. As with any country, we have good people and bad," he says.
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Transcript
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We're hearing border stories on MORNING EDITION. Immigration - it's a big election year issue, one of many we're exploring in our series We, the Voters. So this week, we've met a migrant family crossing the border and a border agent trying to secure it. We've explored the legal status of a Venezuelan migrant and the strains on a city sheltering migrants.
Today, we try to get at the reality of migrants and crime. Republicans have highlighted incidents like the murder of nursing student Laken Riley. Georgia this week indicted a Venezuelan man for that crime. Democrats have said such stories demonize migrants. So what do you find if you visit a single neighborhood that is rich in immigrants? NPR's Martin Kaste went to New York City.
MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: If you're looking for evidence of a crime wave driven by recent migrants, you won't find it in the national statistics. Violent crime has been coming down for the last couple of years, even as immigration has surged. But if you zoom in on specific neighborhoods, the picture gets more complicated.
This part of Jackson Heights in Queens has long been very Latin American, the kind of place where you can go all day without having to speak English. Within steps of the subway, you can find Colombian-style breakfast, a Brazilian steak place and Mexican fruit smoothies served from a food truck. And the neighborhood has become a magnet for many of the 190,000 migrants who've come through New York in the past two years.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: (Singing) ABC.
KASTE: The biggest group are Venezuelans. A half-dozen kids play on the sidewalk under the weary eye of a mother leaning on a stroller. Her daughter is the one selling candy.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #2: For $1.
KASTE: One dollar for a paleta?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #2: Yes. One, two, three, four, five.
KASTE: But as these newcomers have settled in, there have been tensions, especially with people who've been here longer.
CARLOS CHAPARRO: (Speaking Spanish)
KASTE: Unfortunately, crime is up, says Carlos Chaparro, standing at the door to his storefront school, which teaches how to do jobs such as construction zone flagger. He says his students are getting mugged coming out of night classes. You hear similar stories up and down Roosevelt Avenue, and it's reflected in the statistics.
JOHNNY VELASQUEZ: It happens a lot. It happens a lot.
KASTE: Johnny Velasquez is just coming home from his night shift as a security guard. Like Chaparro, he says there's been a lot more theft in this neighborhood lately, especially the grab-and-run kind.
VELASQUEZ: It's an everyday thing. People on the scooters driving by while you're on your phone, they'll take it. Every day, you walk here, you don't know what's going to happen.
KASTE: And he's just seen it happen just now. Police have arrested a man for trying to steal a backpack. The suspect is still just a few feet away, resisting the cops' efforts to stuff him into the backseat of their squad car.
UNIDENTIFIED THIEF: No. I'm not going back to jail. No.
KASTE: But in this case, the suspect is American. It's the victim who's a migrant, a young man from Ecuador, who's talking to the cops as he bleeds from the hand. And that's the thing about this uptick in local crime - it's hard to separate out if the migrants are responsible or if crime is going up because the new arrivals make such tempting targets.
JACK DONOHUE: They come. They find the neighborhoods where their languages are spoken and there may be acculturation that they can engage in. But they're brand new.
KASTE: Jack Donohue is senior fellow at Rutgers University's Center on Policing. He has 32 years experience in the NYPD. He calls the jump in crime in that Jackson Heights neighborhood substantial, but he says you can't automatically blame the migrants.
DONOHUE: It's a question of what's happening and dissecting it, and not just the occurrence, but who's getting arrested for it would shed a little bit of light on what dynamics are in play there.
KASTE: The available statistics don't shed much light, though, because most crimes aren't tracked by immigration status. Police analysts say you could get an indirect sense of whether newcomers are committing more crimes by looking to see if there's been an unusual jump in first-time arrestees, people new to the system and perhaps new to the country, but New York state doesn't track that, and if NYPD does, it's not sharing those numbers publicly. Neither the department nor the mayor's office would talk to NPR for this story. Meanwhile, the question of migrant crime in New York has become politically charged.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED NEWSCASTER #1: There was another brutal migrant attack on New York City's finest. A group of Venezuelan migrants were caught robbing a store last...
UNIDENTIFIED NEWSCASTER #2: Governor Kathy Hochul says she's certain there should have been jail time for the migrants caught on camera.
KASTE: Most alarming, though, are the dire news stories about a violent new gang.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED NEWSCASTER #2: This as New York City officers were warned this week, Tren de Aragua is expanding its ranks in the city.
KASTE: Tren de Aragua is a Venezuelan prison gang that's spread to other South American countries, and there have been reports of migrants with the gang's tattoos here. But Steven Dudley says the gang itself is still just a phantom in the U.S. Dudley co-directs InSight Crime. It's a think tank focused on groups like this.
STEVEN DUDLEY: You may see individuals connected to Tren de Aragua that may commit crimes on their own, but that doesn't mean Tren de Aragua as a criminal organization is operational in the United States.
KASTE: And if you ask Venezuelan migrants about Tren de Aragua, they say they've heard about it, but usually just on Spanish-language TV. They're usually more worried about plain old street crime.
KASTE: Carolina Reyna, for instance - she lives in a migrant shelter in Manhattan, where she's just stepped outside for a late-night smoke. Bored young men hang around the entrance, but she feels safe here because there's always a police car. She used to work in a bar in that Latin American neighborhood of Queens, but she says she won't go back there anymore, not since she was mugged.
CAROLINA REYNA: (Speaking Spanish).
KASTE: "The boy stabbed me on the left side in the breast," she says. She says the kid had an Ecuadorian accent, and police told her there's security video of the attack, but since February, the case has gone cold.
CHRISTOPHER FLANAGAN: You know, making cases against the migrants, it's just very frustrating.
KASTE: Christopher Flanagan was NYPD's commander for major cases, and he still talks to current detectives. He says they get precious little information about migrants' criminal records back home, and suspects rarely have a mugshot.
FLANAGAN: And then if you do have someone you're able to identify, you don't have any associates. With people who are here long-term, you might know who they live with, and you have none of that data with the migrants.
KASTE: Privately, police say this is the real migrant crime problem. It's not that the migrants commit more crime. In fact, past studies have shown that immigrants commit fewer crimes. But when they do commit crimes, especially the new arrivals, they're simply harder to catch and prosecute. And no one's more frustrated about this than Jose Villalobos. He says any migrant who breaks the law makes things harder for the people like him.
JOSE VILLALOBOS: (Speaking Spanish)
KASTE: "You have to enforce the law against them," he says. Back home, Villalobos used to work for the central bank, calculating the inflation rate until political pressures forced him out. Now he sells snacks from under a tent draped with a Venezuelan flag. When it comes to his countrymen here in New York, he says they're getting a bad rap.
VILLALOBOS: (Speaking Spanish)
KASTE: "People say, here come the criminals, but no, we're not all like that. We've come to work and do good, and, like with any country, we have good people and bad," he says. And then he adds that he personally wants to do the best he can in a country that's opened its doors to him. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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