More than 58,000 illegal immigrants convicted of crimes in their home countries or charged have been allowed into the United States by border officials and made their way to New York City, stunning new federal data shows.
Some are in jail (at taxpayer expense, of course) for more crimes committed here, but many walk free, spreading their crime across the five boroughs.
About 1,000 people are part of organized gangs that use city shelters as headquarters.
The rules of New York’s Sanctuary City protect these criminals from deportation.
It’s time to end the madness of migrant shelters, and start providing safety and sanctuary to New York’s legal residents.
Many people hear the word “sanctuary” and think it means offering hospitality to the needy. No. Sanctuary specifically means local police are barred from notifying Immigration and Customs Enforcement when an illegal migrant is arrested.
It protects offenders from deportation, allowing them to commit more crimes.
NYPD crime statistics show that in Manhattan’s Midtown North, known for Radio City Music Hall, St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the theater district, robberies are up 90% and crimes are up 73% from a year ago .
Police say 75% of arrests in Midtown for robberies, assaults and other crimes involve immigrants.
How did this happen? Migrants are no longer checked at the border. The numbers are too high and President Biden has scaled back detention facilities, forcing border staff to immediately release almost everyone into the United States rather than hold them while background checks are done.
Biden has also imposed new rules on ICE, limiting which types of criminals can be removed once their criminal history is discovered. Not all crimes lead to disqualification.
New rules also prohibit ICE from removing illegal immigrants with serious mental illness, according to a 2024 report from the National Audit Office.
Candidate Donald Trump repeatedly warned that some countries are “emptying their prisons. They are emptying their mental hospitals.” Biden welcomed them all.
During the last campaign, the far left and their media allies pushed for it the words of The New York Times“There is no wave of immigrant crime,” adding, “Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the US.” It was a big lie.
That false claim is still being made – in Axios this week for example.
Here are the facts. Before 2020, evidence is mixed on whether illegal migrants committed more crimes.
Links posts a small study from Texas that claims to show that American citizens are more likely to be convicted of crimes. But the data is old, limited to one state and predates the massive influx of migrants under Biden.
On the other hand, research from the Federation for American Immigration Reform found that illegal immigrants are much more likely to commit a crime that lands them in jail than legal residents — twice as likely in New York and California, three times in New Jersey and five times as often as in New York and California. in Arizona.
Whatever the facts were before Biden became president, migrants now pose a risk because they are no longer vetted.
The number of criminal migrants released in New York City alone – 58,000 – should serve as a wake-up call to pro-migrant politicians.
Sanctuary city rules that offer migrants protection from removal if they commit more crimes are insane.
Mayor Adams has repeatedly called for changes to sanctuary regulations. But he also repeatedly claims there is little he can do because the insane majority on the city council is anti-police and weak on crime.
He could have pushed his own Charter Revision Commission last month to put repealing sanctuary protections on the ballot. He couldn’t do that.
Adams should stop dithering and call on Governor Hochul to impose an emergency suspension of sanctuary protections by executive order.
That would allow ICE to deport known criminals from the streets of Gotham, with the help of the NYPD.
Everyone – except the criminals – will be safer.
For permanent change, urban voters will have to actually go to the polls in November and elect a city council that wants to protect them, not criminals.
In the last municipal elections, only 7.2% turned out for the primaries and 12.8% for the general elections. The soft-on-crime leftists won.
If New Yorkers want a safe city, they should vote for it.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of the Committee to Save Our City.
