Fears of a migrant crime wave are growing in NYC, but actual evidence is scant

NEW YORK — The drumbeat of anti-migrant sentiment has been growing in New York for months.

Neighbors of a shelter at Floyd Bennett Field, located in conservative southern Brooklyn, have been complaining about escalating crime and shoplifting. Republican Mazzi Pillip has been hammering her Democratic rival Tom Suozzi with ads evoking the dangers of migrants. During a live broadcast on FOX News, Curtis Sliwa’s Guardian Angels took down a “migrant” who was supposedly shoplifting, neither of which turned out to be true.

Sliwa, calling the man a shoplifter, told the camera: “They’ve taken over.”

Then on Friday, a 15-year-old migrant from Venezuela was arrested by the New York City Police Department after an overnight manhunt for allegedly shooting a foreign tourist inside a Times Square clothing store — he was aiming for a security guard who caught him and his friends shoplifting, police said — and taking shots at a pursuing cop as he fled the scene.

The fears — or conservative talking points — have been bolstered by two recent high-profile episodes. Two police officers were beaten outside a migrant shelter near Times Square, touching off outrage across the city. Days later, a cellphone robbery ring orchestrated by a handful of recent migrants was busted. The episodes sparked GOP calls for the deportation of migrants who’ve committed crimes and for the revocation of New York City’s sanctuary city status.

But is a “migrant crime wave” really taking hold of New York City?

Nothing in the data, at this point, suggests any broad-based or wide-scale increases in crime is being driven by the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants in New York City.

“A few high-profile incidents don’t make a crime wave,” Christopher Herrmann, a professor of criminology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “I feel like it’s more migrant crime wave by media as opposed to a migrant crime wave in reality.”

Mayor Eric Adams, who has said he would entertain the possibility of working more closely with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement if the City Council dialed back some of New York’s sanctuary protections, noted during a press conference on the arrests in the cellphone robbery ring that “the overwhelming number of 170‑plus thousand migrants and asylum seekers are attempting to continue their next leg of their journey of pursuing the American dream,” and that a “small number of people are breaking the law.”

NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban suggested a broader problem when, at the same event, he said, “a wave of migrant crime has washed over our city. ”

The NYPD did not reply to a request for further explanation of his comments.

Dangers of fear mongering

Critics and advocates say the fear mongering underway is vastly disproportionate to the reality of crime in New York City — and that the more migrants are demonized, the more likely violent encounters like the one with Sliwa get more frequent.

Silvio Bustamante, a father of two from Venezuela, arrived in New York last December. He pushed back on this idea, saying that it’s added to his own stresses and fears about creating a new life for himself and his life in the city.

“We’re all afraid,” Bustamante, 33, said of anti-migrant sentiments, adding that he worries for his wife and kids, ages 8 and 10, who are often shouted at or spat at while on the bus going to and from Floyd Bennett Field, the emergency tent shelter they’ve called home since December.

Most recent migrants are, like Bustamante, coming to New York City after fleeing political persecution, violence and economic instability in their home countries.

Murad Awawdah, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, called the recent “migrant crime wave” messaging “scapegoating,” adding that this kind of misinformation makes the city more unsafe for everyone.

“It’s incredibly alarming that they’re championing and pushing false rhetoric and misinformation that is going to potentially create more incidents like what happened in Times Square, where vigilantes attacked a New Yorker on the street because they thought he was a migrant,” he said.

“We need the mayor and NYPD commissioner to stop fanning the flames of hate and spreading misinformation as well as scapegoating migrants and asylum seekers,” Awawdah added.

By the numbers

The city’s police department data shows that crime is slightly down this year, and past studies don’t show a connection between the new arrival of migrants and higher crime.

“If we look at real data, and we look at study after study, it shows that immigrant communities make communities safer,” Awawdah said.

A study from the American Society of Criminology in 2018 showed that a jump in immigration did not correspond to a jump in violent crimes like murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. A study from the same authors in 2017 found that dramatic increases in undocumented immigrants did not increase rates of drug and alcohol arrests, drug overdoses or DUI deaths.

In New York City, major crimes have dropped slightly so far in 2024, down 1.7% as compared to the same time period in 2023.

Robbery is the only category that’s seen a significant rise, with 9% more instances in 2024 to date, as compared to the same period last year.

Murder, rape, burglary and grand larceny auto are all lower than last year, and felony assault and grand larceny have ticked just slightly up, by less than a percentage point. Petit larceny is down by just over a percentage point since this time in 2023.

Neighbors of Floyd Bennett Field, the controversial shelter for recently arrived migrant families, have often raised concerns about shoplifting and general lawlessness brought by their new neighbors.

In Brooklyn’s 63rd precinct, where the tent shelter is located, major crime categories are down 7% from this time last year, with 93 major crimes so far in 2024, compared to 100 instances for the same time frame last year. Grand larceny is down by 22%. Petit larceny, which includes crimes like shoplifting, is up by around 31%.

In the East Village, where chaotic scenes have unfolded when hundreds of migrants waited outside the city’s migrant reticketing center in freezing temperatures for a new shelter bed to become available, crime is also down 7.5% from this time last year.

Felony assault is the only category that is up, with 24 incidents so far this year, compared to 19 at this time last year — that’s a 26.3% increase. Miscellaneous assault is slightly down, and robberies have neither increased or decreased. Petit larceny is down by about 10%.

In the Midtown precinct that includes the Candler building, the site of the brawl between migrants and cops late last month and most of Times Square, there’s been just one less incident so far this year than last year. Robbery is down by about 43% this year to date in the 14th precinct as compared to last year, and grand larceny is up by 20%. Petit larceny down by around 1%.

Robbery is up citywide, but it’s hard to pin that rise on migrants, said Herrmann, the John Jay College criminologist.

Herrmann compared fears of a “migrant crime wave” to fears of random subway crimes last year — despite a few frightening incidents that made news, the chances of the average straphanger getting pushed into the tracks were slim.

“There were a couple of high-profile incidents on the subways, and then all of sudden everyone was very worried about crime in the subways, and I feel like it’s the same thing,” Herrmann said. “Like there’s a couple of high-profile crimes involving migrants, and then everyone is concerned about the migrant crime wave.”

“There’s no real way to prove that there’s a migrant crime wave,” he said. “You can say that robbery is up in 2024. You can say that there’s a couple of high-profile robberies with migrants as offenders … But those are the one out of the 100 that week, so it’s not a good sample or representation of it.”