A large-scale study examining thousands of U.S. neighborhoods found no evidence that increases in undocumented immigration drive crime, challenging a connection President Donald Trump has repeatedly made while advocating for stricter immigration enforcement.
The research, published in the Journal of Urban Affairs, tracked crime trends across 11,500 neighborhoods representing about 46 million residents in U.S. cities between 2010 and 2018. Researchers found that neighborhoods where the share of undocumented residents increased experienced greater declines in property crime and no significant change in violent crime.
