Trump announces tariffs on immigration. What the numbers say about border crossings, drugs and crime.

WASHINGTON – In an evening statement, President-elect Donald Trump criticized Mexico and Canada, accusing them of allowing thousands of people to enter the U.S.

Echoing a theme familiar from the campaign trail and his first term, Trump portrayed the country’s borders as insecure and immigrants contributing to crime and the fentanyl crisis. In a statement that could have had serious consequences, he threatened to impose 25% tariffs on everything entering the country from these two countries.

Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric has resonated with voters concerned about immigration and crime. But there is more to this story than Trump’s brief statement suggested.

Take a look at what the numbers and research say about border crossings, fentanyl smuggling and whether there is a link between immigration and crime:

Border crossings

The number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border is a key metric closely watched by both Republicans and Democrats.

Customs and Border Protection, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, releases monthly statistics that track everything from drug seizures to cross-border trade. One of the monitored indicators is the number of Border Patrol arrests or encounters each month with people entering the country between official border crossings – called ports of entry.

The vast majority of these arrests occur at the southern border.

Those numbers are actually declining this year under Biden. In October, Border Patrol made 56,530 arrests, the lowest level in about four years.

It wasn’t always like this. The Biden administration has struggled to curb the rising number of migrants arriving at the southern border. Just under a year ago, in December 2023, Border Patrol made approximately a quarter of a million arrests on the southern border — highest level ever. There was cross-border trade were destroyed due to the transfer of border officers to help handle migrants and the temporary closure of train traffic.

Since then, the number of people encountered at the southern border fell and stayed down through a more stringent combination law enforcement on the Mexican side AND asylum restrictions announced earlier this year by the Biden administration.

Republicans claimed these numbers.

They have often accused the Biden administration of using an app called CBP One to let hundreds of thousands of people into the country who otherwise would not have been allowed. They described the program under which 1,450 people a day they can make an appointment to come to the US, which is essentially a way to keep the number of appointments at the border artificially low.

On the northern border, the numbers are much smaller. Between October 2023 and September 2024, Border Patrol made 23,721 arrests compared to 10,021 in the previous 12 months.

Trump also had difficulty dealing with illegal border crossings. In 2019, arrests topped 850,000, almost triple the number of arrests two years earlier, though still well below the 2 million-plus figure in two different years of the Biden administration.

Drug smuggling

Trump and many Republicans have often portrayed the U.S. southern border as wide open to drug smuggling. They also linked immigrants to drug smuggling and accused Mexico of doing little to stop it.

Much of U.S. fentanyl is smuggled out of Mexico.

The fentanyl plague began long before Biden took office. Border seizures have increased dramatically under the Biden administration, which may partly reflect improved detection. In the government’s fiscal year 2023, U.S. authorities seized about 27,000 pounds (12,247 kilograms) of fentanyl, up from 2,545 pounds (1,154 kilograms) in 2019, when Trump was president.

Cooperation between the Mexican and U.S. governments to combat drug smuggling has undoubtedly suffered under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who left office at the end of September.

Before López Obrador took office in December 2018, the United States worked closely with the Mexican military to eliminate drug capos.

But López Obrador, a nationalist and popular populist, condemned the violence sparked by the drug war waged by his predecessors and the Americans. He proposed tackling the root social causes of violence in poverty and lack of opportunities for young people, with what he called “hugs, not bullets.”

López Obrador has denied for years that Mexico produces fentanyl, despite evidence to the contrary, including statements from his own security officials. He blames American society, which he believes families push children out of the home too early, for cultivating addictions.

Only two months of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s term have passed.

Although most fentanyl comes from Mexico, statistics show that Americans are involved in smuggling across the border. According to the US Sentencing Commission86.4% of people convicted of fentanyl trafficking offenses in the 12 months ending September 2023 were American citizens.

Crime and immigration

Trump has too he claimed that the influx Immigration causes crime to increase in the US, even though statistics show that violent crime is decreasing.

Texas is the only state that tracks crime by immigration status. A study published by the National Academy of Sciences using data from the Texas Department of Public Safety from 2012 to 2016 found that people in the U.S. illegally have “significantly lower crime rates compared to native-born citizens and legal immigrants who have committed a range of crimes. “

Although FBI statistics do not distinguish crimes based on the immigration status of the attacker, there is no evidence of a sharp increase in crime committed by migrants either along the U.S.-Mexico border or in cities that are seeing the largest influx of migrants, such as New York. Research has shown that people living in the U.S. illegally are less likely to be arrested for violent, drug and property crimes compared to Native Americans.

Some crimes are inevitable given the large immigrant population. According to the latest estimates from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, approximately 11 million people were in the country illegally in January 2022. In 2022, the Census Bureau estimated the foreign-born population at 46.2 million, or nearly 14% of the total, with most states seeing double-digit increases over the past dozen years.

Republicans have highlighted high-profile crimes committed by immigrants, such as the February murder 22-year-old Laken Riley in Georgia and argued that any crime committed by a person who is in the country illegally is a crime that should not have occurred.

A Venezuelan who entered the country illegally was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison prison this month for Riley’s murder.