Trump won’t solve NYC’s migrant problem with a return to law-and-order
New Yorkers are worried about surging migrant crime — from the murder of Georgia student Laken Riley, killed by a man whose first US destination was New York City — to the brazen robberies tied to Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. But how widespread is migrant crime and what policy changes will stop it?
The most obvious fix is reducing both the number of migrants flooding into New York City and the social-service largess that attracts them. Since spring 2022, New Yorkers received a stunning 223,000 migrants and asylum seekers, each costing taxpayers $352 daily for housing, social services, and amenities.
The city plans to close 12 migrant shelters before January, and New Yorkers can anticipate some further respite under immigration policy reversals under President-elect Donald Trump. Trump has pledged to seal the southern border, carry out a monumental deportation effort, and end Biden-era parole programs for illegal entrants, as well as migrants’ ability to apply for asylum while still in Mexico through the CBP One app. He has also nominated a strong border proponent, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, to head the Department of Homeland Security.
But none of this will staunch migrants flocking to the city to take advantage of lax bail, discovery, and “Raise the Age” laws, ideologically progressive judges, and an under-resourced system. These have made the Big Apple a tantalizing migrant destination for property crime.
Thieves are renting mopeds to cruise in pairs, ping-ponging the boroughs, and snatching jewelry, phones, and purses. To combat this trend, police scout for duos on bikes, making traffic stops in hopes of preventing the next spree. Police operations also seize mopeds without license plates, which they find lined up outside migrant shelters.
NYPD aviation units scout getaway mopeds from helicopters (weather permitting), but apprehension is challenging. Also difficult is stopping migrants from fencing shoplifted property in shelters or shipping stolen cellphones overseas, where they’re untraceable.
But even when arrested, migrant criminals face few consequences. As most enter with no US criminal history, it’s virtually impossible to detain migrants for their first New York crime. Statewide bail reform in 2020 made hundreds of infractions ineligible for bail setting, regardless of defendants’ dangerousness.
By 2022, amendments allowed judges to detain defendants re-arrested for a felony or Class A misdemeanor involving “harm to an identifiable person or property,” but only if they have a pending case also involving such harm. This applies to theft — unless the theft is “negligible” and not “in furtherance of other criminal activity.” So now courts can sometimes detain migrants who repeatedly mug people or shoplift; but the “harm-on-harm” provision is only as effective as judges’ willingness to use it. New York’s progressive-appointed judges frequently won’t.
New York’s 2020 discovery statute intensifies these problems, forcing prosecutors to downgrade charges in the hope of getting convictions. The Manhattan district attorney’s office went from downgrading 24% of felony property crimes in 2019 to downgrading 46% in 2023. This near-doubling has enormous implications for the “harm-on-harm” provision, as new offenses are often reduced below the threshold that makes them bail-eligible.
The discovery law contributed to New York City dismissing 13,651 more misdemeanors in 2023 than in 2019. According to NYPD data, misdemeanor conviction rates dropped from over 13% in 2017 to just 4% last year, while the felony conviction rate fell from 11% to 3%. In the Midtown precincts straddling migrant-filled Roosevelt Hotel, petit larcenies are up 36% year-to-date compared with 2019. In Midtown South, grand larcenies rose from 1,671 to 2,038 over that time.
Teen migrants contribute to this surge, exploiting the state’s 2017 Raise the Age law. Under this reform, essentially all misdemeanors committed by 16- and 17-year-olds go to family court, where they face negligible consequences, prosecutors can’t learn case outcomes, and future judges are barred from considering past arrests. Further, 83% of felonies, and even 75% of violent felonies, now go to family court, too. No wonder youth arrests for major crimes have risen an astounding 42% since 2022.
Young Latin American gang members — some with Tren de Aragua tattoos — increasingly head for this permissive climate. Cops now internally track such identifiers, but migrant crime responses have stretched the NYPD thin.
Fixing immigration policy is only part of the answer. Unless New York also amends its destructive criminal-justice laws, it will remain a sanctuary for criminality.
Hannah E. Meyers is a fellow and director of policing and public safety for the Manhattan Institute.
