"There is a Revolution going on in California," President Trump opined on Twitter last week. "Soooo many Sanctuary areas want OUT of this ridiculous, crime infested & breeding concept."
Research by Tom K. Wong, an associate professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego, says otherwise. He interviewed a representative sample of nearly 600 illegal immigrants from Mexico in San Diego County, asking about how sanctuary city policies shape their interactions with police.
The results were dramatic: If "local law enforcement officials were working together with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)], 60.8 percent said they are less likely to report a crime they witnessed, and 42.9 percent said they are less likely to report being a victim of a crime." That stark difference held true across other scenarios, too:
Wong concludes that sanctuary policies encourage undocumented immigrants to report crime to the police, and that "counties with sanctuary policies have less crime than comparable non-sanctuary counties, or that there is no statistically significant relationship between city sanctuary policies and increased crime rates." Read the full report here.