Criminologists also note that it ignores the vast web of statutory crimes concurrent with illegal immigration – drug smuggling, human trafficking, child labor violations, prostitution, the black market in employment, and so on.

What remains undeniable by the law of averages is that the massive surge in immigration since the Biden administration relaxed border policies – a surge that it puts at more than 4 million people, but other sources millions more – has been accompanied by much more crime, however unquantifiable.

Millions of migrants, though not all, run afoul of laws by their situation more than by overtly malign criminal intent. But their first step across the border is a lawbreaking one, and it is often followed by life on the law’s margins: living in the U.S. without insurance or proper work papers, providing illicit labor for unscrupulous or blasé employers, turning to black markets for counterfeit Social Security cards, and often becoming targets for robbers or extortionists. Their desire to come to America creates a vast pool of criminality involving them or those illegally profiting from them.