More than 58,000 illegal migrants convicted of felonies or facing charges in their home country have been allowed into the United States by border officials and have come to New York City, stunning new federal data show.
Some are in jail (on the taxpayers’ dime, of course) for more crimes committed here, but many are walking free, spreading their criminality across the five boroughs.
About 1,000 are part of organized gangs, using city shelters as their headquarters.
New York’s sanctuary-city rules protect these criminals from being deported.
It’s time to end the sanctuary-for-migrants madness, and start offering safety and sanctuary to New York’s legal residents.
Many people hear the word “sanctuary” and take it to mean offering hospitality to the needy. No. Sanctuary specifically means barring local cops from notifying Immigration and Customs Enforcement when an illegal migrant is arrested.
It shields wrongdoers from being deported, allowing them to commit more crimes.
NYPD crime stats show that in Manhattan’s Midtown North, known for Radio City Music Hall, St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the theatre district, robberies are up 90%, and felony assaults jumped 73% over a year ago.
Cops say 75% of arrests in Midtown for robberies, assaults and other crimes are of migrants.
How did this happen? Migrants are no longer vetted at the border. The numbers are too large, and President Biden scaled back detention facilities, forcing border personnel to release almost everyone into the United States immediately, rather than hold them while background checks are done.
Biden also slapped new rules on ICE, limiting what types of felons can be removed once their criminal past is discovered. Not all felonies are disqualifying.
New rules also bar ICE from removing illegal migrants with serious mental illness, per a 2024 report from the General Accounting Office.
Candidate Donald Trump warned repeatedly that some countries are “emptying their prisons. They’re emptying their mental institutions.” Biden welcomed them all.
During the last campaign, the far left and their media allies insisted, in the words of The New York Times, “There is no migrant crime surge,” adding “immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the US.” It was a big lie.
That false claim is still being made — in Axios this week, for example.
Here are the facts. Before 2020, the evidence is mixed on whether illegal migrants committed more crimes.
The left sites a small Texas study that purports to show that US citizens more likely to be convicted of felonies. But the data are old, limited to one state and predate the huge influx of migrants under Biden.
On the other side, research by the Federation for American Immigration Reform found that illegal migrants were far more likely to commit a crime landing them in prison than legal residents — twice as likely in New York and California, three times in New Jersey and five times in Arizona.
Whatever the facts before Biden became president, migrants pose a risk now because they are no longer vetted.
The sheer number of criminal migrants released into New York City — 58,000 —should wake up migrant-pandering politicians.
Sanctuary-city rules granting migrants protection from removal when they commit more crimes are crazy.
Mayor Adams has frequently called for sanctuary rules to be changed. But he also repeatedly claims there’s little he can do, because the lunatic majority on the City Council is anti-police and soft on crime.
He could have pushed his own Charter Revision Commission to put a repeal of sanctuary protections on the ballot last month. He failed to.
Adams should stop dithering and call on Gov. Hochul to impose an emergency suspension of sanctuary protection by executive order.
That would allow ICE to begin deporting known criminals off Gotham’s streets with the assistance of the NYPD.
Everyone — except the criminals — will be safer.
A permanent change will require city voters to actually turn out at the polls next November and elect a City Council that wants to protect them, not criminals.
In the last municipal election, only 7.2 % turned out for the primary and 12.8% for the general election. The soft-on-crime leftists won.
If New Yorkers want a safe city, they need to vote for it.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of the Committee to Save Our City.
