Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut on Monday said it was “important to push back” against the “narrative” that there is a “migrant crime wave,” despite the broad public attention on recent prominent murders committed by illegal immigrants.
Illegal immigration has become a significant issue in the 2024 presidential campaign after a series of crimes involving illegal immigrants, including the murders of Rachel Morin, Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungaray, focused public attention on the issue. Murphy claimed that statistics proved that immigrants didn’t commit crimes as often as American citizens did.
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“You don’t have to feed into the irrational fear that Trump is trying to make people feel. And it is important to push back on this idea of a migrant crime wave,” Murphy told MSNBC host Chris Jansing. “We don’t have to accept that as the dominant narrative. Why? Because the data actually tells us that immigrants to this country commit crimes at a rate lower than natural-born Americans. Now, that is an inconvenient narrative for Fox News and for the Trump campaign, but it is true.”
“I think we have a moral obligation, as well as a political obligation, to push back against this idea that you are at risk if you live in a community with more migrants,” Murphy said, before asserting that crime went down under President Joe Biden after the passage of gun-control legislation.
The mothers of Morin and Nungaray spoke at a Trump campaign event Thursday that highlighted Trump’s position on border security. The alleged killers of Morin, Riley and Nungaray have been identified as illegal immigrants who were released into the country under the Biden administration.
“And then we also just have to tell people that crime went up when Donald Trump was president. He did nothing to stop it,” Murphy claimed. “Crime is going down under Joe Biden, and he did something to stop it. He passed the most significant anti-gun violence bill in a generation. So again, we have true narratives available to us.”
The Border Patrol encountered just under 7.3 million illegal immigrants since the start of fiscal year 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.