This short online essay analyzes the recent use of propaganda and manufactured facts by the Trump Administration to stigmatize immigrants as dangerous.  Here is the basic argument:

“Trump has directed ICE (the federal agency responsible for immigration enforcement) to collect and study data on what Trump has long—and falsely—alleged to be a major public safety problem: the criminal behavior of immigrants in this country. With a sweep of his pen, Trump has created an ICE public relations office that is charged with providing “quarterly reports studying the effects of the victimization by criminal aliens present in the United States.” At first glance, the professed cause seems noble. But narrowing these studies to only those crimes perpetrated by immigrants and shoehorning such a study into the agency responsible for immigration enforcement is both irresponsible and dangerous. ICE has neither the time nor the expertise to be advancing someone else’s social science theories of crime.

Here’s the truth on immigrants and crime. Numerous studies have shown that the crime rate among immigrants is significantly lower than among native-born U.S. citizens. In the 1990s and 2000s, as the immigrant population dramatically grew in the United States, FBI data shows that the violent crime rate simultaneously plummeted. These and other statistics demonstrate that the vast majority of immigrants are law-abiding, contributing members of society.”

KJ