Migrants are safer in their home countries

In an aerial photo, immigrants pass through coils of barbed wire as they cross the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, in March. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Homicide rates in Honduras fell 16.5% between January and September 2023, falling to 31.1 per 100,000 residents – from a high of 66 per 100,000 in 2014. Venezuela’s homicide rate also fell from a 2015 high of 90 per 100,000 to only 26.8 per 100,000 inhabitants. 100,000 by 2023. Similarly, homicides in Guatemala fell by 50% between 2014 and 2020 and have been hovering around 16 +/- per 1000,000 since then. Meanwhile, El Salvador’s homicide rate fell by 70% in 2023, to 2.4 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Although crime rates in the United States fell overall in 2023, homicide rates remained very high in some major American cities. Memphis had 63.12 homicides per 100,000 residents, followed by St. Louis at 50.25, Baltimore at 45.62, Detroit at 42.55, and Washington, D.C. at 39.05.

Each of those U.S. cities is also a major destination for migrants. And if you’re a statistical person, you may have noticed a trend. Murder rates in many Central and South American countries where hundreds of thousands of migrants come from have fallen over the past decade. And they are now actually lower than those of many of the major American cities where migrants are moving.

However, that is problematic. Americans are consistently told that the endless stream of humanity flowing down the Rio Grande consists of victims of “high levels of violence” that are “akin to war zones.” And Britain’s national purveyor of exaggerations, The Guardian, went so far as to claim that Central America is a “hell that the US helped create.”

So, what’s really going on here? How is it possible that Central and South Americans seek asylum in cities that are actually safer than the American metropolitan areas where they settle?

The answer is simple. The American public is being lied to to push a globalist, anti-border political agenda. And the untruth we are all being told is that illegal immigrants have a right to violate U.S. immigration laws because their lives are in danger.

In a 2018 report, the Brookings Institution summarized the Big Lie this way: “It is an outdated idea that people from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are primarily looking for economic opportunity in the United States and therefore have to wait in the future. queue for a visa. For people fleeing these countries, waiting for a visa can lead to death, rape or forced recruitment into crime.”

Actually, the outdated idea is the idea that Brookings promotes. Migrants are far more likely to be murdered, raped, or forcibly recruited into crime during their journey to the United States than if they simply stayed home. According to Senior Border Patrol Agents testifying before Congress, criminal cartels are responsible for the cross-border routes into the United States and “no one crosses the border without paying.” But even those who pay are victims of sexual abuse, abuse and human trafficking.

And that exploitation doesn’t stop once migrants manage to cross the border and sneak into America. The same human trafficking groups that bring illegal immigrants to the United States continue their predatory practices in immigrant neighborhoods across the country. In 2023, the Department of Labor and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement found migrant minors working in meatpacking and manufacturing plants in eleven states. Researchers have found evidence that these children may have been located by a criminal human trafficking ring and forced into indentured servitude.

Adult migrants often do no better in the workplace. Because they have no right to reside in the United States or accept employment, illegal immigrants are constant victims of workplace abuse. Companies that hire them usually do so because they want to cut corners by paying substandard wages and avoiding the costs associated with insurance and other employee benefits. In 2017, AP published an article about companies that profit from illegal migrant workers and then fire unauthorized workers when they become sick, injured or permanently disabled due to debilitating workplace accidents.

And unfortunately, sex trafficking is as common as forced labor in areas favored by migrants. A study by the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women found that “60 percent of Latin American children who try to cross the border alone or with smugglers are captured by the cartels and abused in child pornography or drug trafficking.”

In light of this kind of data, it’s hard to see how organizations like Brookings can say with a straight face that Central and South America are more dangerous than Memphis, St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit or Washington.

In reality, if the United States wants to ensure that Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans are protected from death, rape, or modern slavery, the best it can do is encourage them to stay home. And the easiest way to do that is by securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws. The less likely that illegal immigrants are allowed to remain in the US, the less likely they are to risk the dangerous journey to get here.

A native of Massachusetts, Matt O’Brien is director of research at the Immigration Reform Law Institute and co-host of IRLI’s podcast “No Border, No Country.” Before working for IRLI, he was an immigration judge. He has nearly 30 years of experience in immigration law and policy and has held numerous positions at the Department of Homeland Security.