Four Pillars of the Immigration-Crime Myth: A Summary of U.S. Public Opinion and Research on Immigration-Crime Rhetoric

Political rhetoric on immigration has increasingly framed it as a threat to public safety—fueling aggressive immigration enforcement strategies, including the expanded use of federal agents, mass deportations, and strict border controls. In particular, the immigration-crime narrative has been built on four key themes or “pillars,” which suggest that immigration (1) increases crime, (2) fuels gang violence, (3) is responsible for drug problems, and (4) requires mass deportation and strict border control policies to combat these issues and reduce crime. Using data from a 2025 Lucid survey and a review of existing literature, this article provides a clear and focused summary describing the extent to which these four claims of the immigration-crime narrative are supported by (1) public opinion and (2) findings from scientific research. As we highlight in the following sections, all four of these “pillars” of the immigration-crime narrative are in fact myths with no consistent empirical support.