U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., argued on Wednesday that the idea that mass immigration puts the U.S. at risk is a “fake problem.”
During an interview with Connecticut news outlet the CT Mirror Murphy was asked about the arrests of parents at a bus stop in Danbury by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Murphy said the intent of these arrests was to “terrorize these little kids” before promoting his work to oppose ICE and protect immigrants.
Host John Dankosky then asked Murphy, “Longer term, what can and should be done to solve this problem?”
Murphy argued that President Donald Trump’s administration was trying to solve a “fake problem” of mass immigration creating more crime rather than fixing an immigration system that appears to operate “without rules.”
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“The problem, according to the Trump administration, is a country that has been invaded, a country that is at risk physically because of the presence of people from other countries,” Murphy responded. “That is a fake problem. That is not a real problem.”
“Nobody likes to hear this,” he added, “but immigrants, first generation immigrants and undocumented immigrants both commit crimes at rates lower than natural-born Americans, than people that are born here in this country. So if you want to live in a safe community, you are actually better off living in a community with people that just got to the United States of America. And so we’re not seeking to solve ‘a problem’ of migrant crime.”
Murphy conceded that the U.S. immigration system does “frustrate” Americans across the political spectrum “when we have a system of immigration that appears lawless, that appears without rules.”
“That you can have your mom or dad or grandmother wait in line for years and years and years and then someone comes across the border who doesn’t actually have a legal claim to stay in the U.S. and gets to be here for years. That’s the problem we have to solve,” he added.
When asked by a listener whether he would dismantle ICE as an institution, he replied that people need to “tear down ICE and rebuild it” arguing that “this version of ICE should not remain or come back if Democrats control the presidency or Congress.”
Murphy has drawn scrutiny over his stance on immigration, including past comments stating that Democratic policy has “failed to deliver for the people we care about most, the undocumented Americans that are in this country.”
Daniel Di Martino, a Manhattan Institute fellow and Venezuelan-born economist, suggested that while Murphy’s point about immigrant crime levels may be technically correct, demographic differences skew those figures.
“It is true that the average immigrant, legal or illegal, is less likely to commit crime. For example, while according to the census’ latest five-year American Community Survey over 2% of [A]merican-born between 18 and 59 years old are imprisoned, only 0.75% of immigrant men are,” he began.” When we split groups by nativity and race, we see that even non-Hispanic White men are more likely to be in prison than foreign-born men with 1.2% of White men in prison. Black and Native American men lead with the highest imprisonment rate with nearly 6.5% of each of these groups in a carceral facility.”
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Di Martino noted that crime rates among immigrants also vary by country of origin.
“Among immigrants, it is Hondurans who have the highest imprisonment rate at 1.7% of their men in jail. Mexicans also have a higher imprisonment rate than White men at 1.4%. Europeans, South Americans, and Asian immigrants all have very low crime rates,” he said. “Indian men specifically are the group with the lowest imprisonment rate among all large immigrant origins with barely 0.09% of them in jail, likely because the majority of Indian immigrants are high-skilled immigrants on H-1B visas or already have green cards or citizenship through employment.”
Beyond demographics, he argued that one key feature skews the number of crimes committed by American-born citizens.
“But the crime gap between immigrants and natives in the United States hides an important fact: Immigrants who commit a crime tend to be deported and thus cannot reoffend,” he said. “Since most crimes are committed by career criminals who reoffend after release, non-citizens do not get as many chances to reoffend as native-born Americans. This is a good thing and criminal non-citizens should be deported.”
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Theo Wold, former assistant attorney general and former White House deputy assistant for domestic policy under Trump, spoke to Fox News Digital about Murphy’s comments.
“There are no reliable statistics showing that illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes — and Democrats are the reason. They have blocked efforts to record and report illegal immigrant crime for decades so they can spout pseudo-statistics like these, made up out of whole cloth,” he said.
“Illegal immigration is a real issue for ordinary Americans — both crime and economic displacement. I grew up in Stockton, the first American city where foreign-born residents became the majority of the population, and it is now consistently one of the nation’s most violent municipalities,” he added. “My father owned a carpentry business that he later shut down due to illegal aliens undercutting his prices. Chris Murphy should leave the bubble of his donors’ swanky mansions along Connecticut’s Gold Coast if he wants to see how illegal immigration has affected this country.”
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security also defended ICE.
“Our agents are focused on protecting the American people — not entertaining performative outrage. Where is the outrage for Angel families who lost a loved one to illegal alien crime?” the spokesman asked. “To most Americans, our brave ICE law enforcement are heroes. 80% of Americans support arresting and deporting criminal illegal aliens from American neighborhoods. These officers put their lives on the line every day to arrest the worst of the worst, including murderers, pedophiles, rapists, gang members, and terrorists all while facing a 1,300% increase in assaults, a 3,300% increase in vehicular attacks, and an 8,000% increase in death threats against them.”
The spokesman concluded, “Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, if you break the law, you will face the consequences. Illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S. We will find you, we will arrest you, and we will deport you whether Connecticut’s pro-criminal illegal alien senator likes it or not.”