Trump promises tariffs on immigration. What the numbers say about border crossings, drugs and crime

WASHINGTON – In an announcement Monday evening, President-elect Donald Trump denounced Mexico and Canada, accusing them of allowing thousands of people into the United States.

Picking up a familiar theme from the campaign trail and his first term, Trump described the country’s borders as insecure and immigrants as contributing to crime and the fentanyl crisis. In an announcement that could have serious repercussions, he threatened to impose 25% tariffs on everything that enters the country from these two countries.

Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric resonated with voters concerned about immigration and crime. Yet there is more to the story than what Trump’s short statement suggests.

A look at what the numbers and studies say about border crossings, fentanyl smuggling and whether there is a link between immigration and crime:

Border crossings

The number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border is a key indicator closely watched by Republicans and Democrats.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, releases monthly statistics that track everything from drug seizures to cross-border trade. One of the indicators tracked is the number of monthly Border Patrol arrests or encounters with people entering the country between official border crossings – called ports of entry.

The vast majority of these arrests take place at the southern border.

Those numbers actually declined this year under the Biden administration. The Border Patrol made 56,530 arrests in October, the lowest level in four years.

It wasn’t always like this. The Biden administration has struggled to reduce the growing number of migrants arriving at the southern border. Just under a year ago, in December 2023, the Border Patrol made approximately a quarter of a million arrests along the southern border… an absolute record. Cross-border trade was damaged when border agents were reassigned to help process migrants and rail traffic was temporarily closed.

Since then, the number of people encountered at the southern border having let go and remained on land despite a combination of stricter measures application on the Mexican side And asylum restrictions announced earlier this year by the Biden administration.

Republicans have warned about these figures.

They have frequently accused the Biden administration of using an app called CBP One to let hundreds of thousands of people into the country who otherwise would not be allowed in. 1,450 people per day can make appointments to come to the United States, essentially to keep the number of border crossings artificially low.

On the northern border, the numbers are much lower. The Border Patrol made 23,721 arrests between October 2023 and September 2024, compared to 10,021 in the previous 12 months.

Trump has also struggled to rein in illegal border crossings. Arrests topped 850,000 in 2019, nearly triple the number two years earlier, but still well below the total of more than 2 million in two different years under Biden.

Drug trafficking

Trump and many Republicans have often described the U.S. southern border as wide open to drug trafficking. They also linked immigrants to drug trafficking and accused Mexico of doing little to stop it.

Much of America’s fentanyl comes smuggled out of Mexico.

The fentanyl scourge began long before Biden took office. Border seizures have risen sharply under Biden, which may partly reflect better detection. About 27,000 pounds (12,247 kilograms) of fentanyl were seized by U.S. authorities in the 2023 fiscal year, compared to 2,545 pounds (1,154 kilograms) in 2019, when Trump was president.

Cooperation between the Mexican and U.S. governments in combating drug trafficking has undoubtedly suffered under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who left office at the end of September.

Before López Obrador took office in December 2018, the United States worked closely with the Mexican military to eliminate drug-related capos.

But López Obrador, a nationalist and populist, denounced the violence unleashed by the war on drugs waged by his predecessors and the Americans. He proposed tackling the root societal causes of violence – poverty and lack of opportunities for young people – through what he called “hugs, not bullets”.

For years, López Obrador denied that Mexico manufactured fentanyl, despite evidence to the contrary, including statements from his own security officials. He accused American society, where families push their children out of the home too early, of cultivating drug addicts.

President Claudia Sheinbaum’s term lasts only two months, but there are signs that she seems more willing than her predecessor to let the army go after the cartels.

But even though most fentanyl comes from Mexico, statistics show that Americans are the ones smuggling it across the border. According to the American Sentencing Commission86.4% of people convicted of trafficking fentanyl during a 12-month period ending September 2023 were U.S. citizens.

Crime and immigration

Trump also argues that the influx Immigration is causing an increase in crime in the United States, even though statistics show that violent crime is declining.

Texas is the only state that tracks crime by immigration status. A study published by the National Academy of Sciences, based on Texas Department of Public Safety data from 2012 to 2016, found that people residing illegally in the United States had “significantly lower crime rates than those living in the United States. native-born citizens and legal immigrants, for a range of criminal offenses.” »

Although FBI statistics do not distinguish crimes by the immigration status of the attacker, there is no evidence of an increase in crime perpetrated by migrants, either along the border between the United States and Mexico or in cities experiencing the largest influx of migrants, such as New York. Studies have found that people living in the United States illegally are less likely than native-born Americans to have been arrested for violent, drug, and property crimes.

Some crime is inevitable given the large immigrant population. There were about 11 million people in the country illegally as of January 2022, according to the latest estimate from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In 2022, the Census Bureau estimated the foreign-born population at 46.2 million, or nearly 14 percent of the total, with most states seeing double-digit increases over the past dozen years.

Republicans have highlighted high-profile crimes committed by immigrants, such as the murder of Laken Riley, 22 years old in Georgia and argued that any crime committed illegally by anyone in the country is a crime that should not have happened.

A Venezuelan who entered the country illegally has been convicted and sentenced to life in prison. prison this month for Riley’s murder.

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Associated Press writer Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed to this report.