If you've been following the headlines, particularly coming out of America's larger cities, it's been impossible to miss all of the stories about crimes involving illegal migrants in some fashion. In New York, for example, there have been at least eight gun-related murders so far this year where either the shooter, the victim, or both were migrants. Mostly we hear about the most horrifying crimes involving violent attacks, rapes, and abuse involving migrants, but many incidents of property crimes and lower-level assaults take place as well. But are actual crime rates higher among the illegal migrants or is this all hyperbole cooked up by the "right-wing media" during an election season, as some leftist commentators have suggested? The problem, as pointed out by Nicole Gelinas in an op-ed at the NY Post this week, is that we simply don't know. We aren't getting the sort of data we would require to draw any firm conclusions.

Last Monday, Venezuelan migrant Sandra Serrano was shot and killed outside the Randall’s Island migrant shelter, caught in the crossfire in what police think was a retaliatory shooting for a robbery.

Serrano’s murder was the second killing at the 3,000-bed shelter, and at least the eighth migrant-related killing this year.

If Mayor Adams doesn’t want such headlines to govern New Yorkers’ perceptions of migrant crime, City Hall needs to provide hard data.

Serrano’s killing marked four murders in July in which migrants were perpetrators or victims — or both.

Another disturbing trend is the amount of criminal violence being attributed to Venezuelan gangs that have recently been operating with impunity in our cities. A few weeks ago, two men living in a Brooklyn migrant shelter were shot and killed, reportedly by Venezuelan gang members. So how is it that we don't have the required data? We have been tracking crime rates in New York and other cities for decades and haven't seemed to have much trouble doing so.

The difference, at least according to Gelinas, is that the NYD and most other urban law enforcement groups don't track immigration status as part of their criminal records. Similarly, while there is a category in the NYPD's records for "gang-related activity," they don't break that down further to separate "imported gang activity." All of the crimes are tossed into the same buckets. A murder is a murder, whether the killer or the victim is a migrant, or if both of them are.

So is this information that we should be tracking as the Post suggests? It's certainly a topic of intense interest these days and a concern shared by many voters, including in New York City. You would think they would want to be on top of this question. I can already hear some liberals objecting and saying that it would be racist to track crime data based on immigration status. But that would be a false analysis for a couple of reasons. First of all, New York City (along with virtually all municipalities) already tracks crime statistics based on race and they have been doing so for a long time. For example, you can go to the 2023 Crime and Enforcement Activity Report (published right on the municipal website) and learn that Black New Yorkers made up the highest percentage of victims, suspects, and arrestees in the city, at 38.9, 49.7, and 43.1 percent respectively. It's not racist to record these figures and point them out. When applied properly, this data can help law enforcement to more intelligently deploy its limited resources.

The problem we may run into when calculating illegal migrant crime levels is that we can typically figure out who the citizens are who are committing crimes or being victimized. The illegal migrants who arrive here frequently have no valid ID, with some intentionally throwing their ID away before crossing the border. Many are using false names. If they are being handed voter registration forms as soon as they sign up for benefits (and they are), the police may have no way to tell who is an illegal migrant and who is in the country legally. 

Of course, we wouldn't be dealing with this question, or at least not anywhere near this level if Biden and Harris hadn't flooded the country with more than ten million "new arrivals." But they did what they did and we are where we are. We don't know how accurate the numbers will be, but the Governors in all the states should direct their law enforcement agencies to begin collecting citizenship status as part of their crime statistics immediately if they are not doing so already.