By Peter Oliver
If you were to launch a national campaign to fight crime in America, a great place to start would be to identify who the most likely criminals are and the most likely places where they tend to commit their heinous acts. Then you would focus your resources on those people and those places.
This is what makes the Trump administration's crime-fighting efforts so curious. Statistics from various sources tell a pretty clear story of the who and where of crime in the U.S. But rather than follow where the stats lead, this administration has chosen to be guided by ideological considerations in chasing down bad guys in bad places.
‘WHO’ OF CRIME
Start with the "who" of crime. The Trump administration, as part of its justification for an aggressive push against immigrants, has declared that immigrants are responsible for a crime wave across the country. The administration has spent an enormous amount of money, through ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Guard, and other federal entities, to go after what Trump has called "the worst of the worst."
And maybe they've had some success in nabbing really bad baddies, but they are causing enormous collateral damage in the process. Even conservative organizations confirm this. The Cato Institute (rated right of center by Media Bias/Fact Check), figures that 65% of those rounded up by ICE have had no criminal record, and just 6.9% had committed violent crimes.
Trump insists that the U.S. is being "ravaged by migrant crime." Yet a study by the National Institute for Justice shows that immigrants in general and illegal immigrants in particular are arrested at less than half the rate of U.S.-born citizens. Other studies have come up with similar statistical findings.
‘THE ENEMY WITHIN’
Another case of getting the "who" wrong is the administration's approach to domestic terrorism. The recent killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk has spurred a renewed attack on what Trump has called "the enemy within" – characterized by Trump's insufferable henchman, Stephen Miller, as a highly organized, well-funded domestic terrorist operation on the left.
But terrorism by a left-wing "enemy within" is far outplaced in the U.S. by the deadly militancy of right-wing extremists, according to several sources. A study by the Department of Justice indicates that since 1990, right wingers have committed acts of domestic terrorism at a rate five times that of left-wing extremists. (Far more than Islamic terrorists, too.) Because the study contradicts Trump's insistence that the "vicious" and "horrible" left are the country's worst terrorists, fomenting violence with incendiary rhetoric, it has been removed from the DOJ's websites. (Talk about incendiary rhetoric. Trump himself is the champ, repeatedly smearing political opponents as "lunatics," "scum," sleazebags," and "idiots." "I hate my opponents," he declared at Charlie Kirk's funeral.)
Conservatives might defend the removal of the DOJ study, arguing that it was born of lefty partisanship, having been produced during the Biden administration. But the Cato Institute, again a right-leaning organization, comes up with similar numbers. According to Cato, 63% of ideologically motivated murders since 1975 were committed by right-wing activists, compared with 23% by Islamic terrorists and 10% by left-wingers. (Both the DOJ and Cato do not include the 2001 attack on the World Trade Centers.)
WRONG ‘WHERE’
While taking misdirected aim at the "who" of American crime, the Trump administration has also been targeting the wrong "where," according to crime statistics. Calling crime in Washington, D.C. "out of control," for example, Trump has famously deployed National Guard units there as a crime-fighting measure.
Forget about the questionable legality of assigning federal troops to do local policing. By going after Washington, Trump is barking up the wrong statistical tree, with the city's violent crime rate ranking just 29th among U.S. cities, according to the FBI's 2024 Uniform Crime Reports. And violent crime in D.C. was reportedly down by more than 25% in 2025. What's more, the National Guard has been stationed in largely low-crime-rate areas in Washington, such as the National Mall, presumably as a showcase to impress tourists with the administration's toughness on crime. Why make Washington a crime-fighting bullseye? There is a partisanship stink here; the city is a Democratic stronghold, where more than 90% of the 2024 presidential vote went to Kamala Harris.
EGREGIOUS MISFIRE
Trump's next favorite city to target has been another Democratic stronghold – Chicago, where the president is threatening to unleash the National Guard and other federal entities as crime fighters. This is an even more egregious misfire than going after Washington, at least statistically. Chicago's violent crime rate ranks 92nd among U.S. cities, and eighth among the nation's 10 most populous cities, well behind, for example, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. But given that the latter three are in Texas – Trump country with a pro-Trump governor – there's no reason to make noise about crime there.
Local law enforcement has never been the business of the federal government. The FBI might handle interstate cases, but policing city streets has traditionally been a local and state affair. Federal troops are not trained to arrest and handcuff people, and in both D.C. and Chicago, local leaders have pleaded with the Trump administration to keep the feds away. So not only is Trump chasing bad guys in the wrong (statistically speaking) places, he is chasing them in places where his "help" is not wanted. Furthermore, in another questionable "who" move, he has redirected much of the FBI's resources away from fighting major interstate crime (international drug dealers, pedophile rings, money launderers, etc.) and toward going after his political adversaries.
In short, Trump's war on crime is a misbegotten, partisan miscalculation. There is plenty of statistical evidence to prove it.
Oliver lives in Warren.
You might also like
