It turns out enforcing the law actually leads to fewer crimes. Who could have predicted that one?
The Trump administration is celebrating data that shows this year saw the biggest one-year drop in murders on record and crime down in every major category across the United States. These victories follow the first year of the Trump administration being in office and enforcing both immigration law and criminal justice reforms. Soft-on-crime policies and open borders under the Biden administration fueled crime, which is going down now that opposite policies are in place.
My colleague Matt Margolis already covered the data to which White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt refers below, and you can read more details and a breakdown of the data in Matt's piece. I am going to focus on why crime is going down after just one year of Donald Trump and Republicans being in charge of the country again.
President Trump is Making America Safe Again: "The U.S. is on pace for the largest one-year drop in murders the nation has ever seen, according to an analysis by crime stats expert Jeff Asher. Crime is down in every major category."
— Karoline Leavitt (@@PresSec) Dec 30, 2025
The first and most obvious reason is that the Trump administration has inaugurated and maintained a strict and widespread crackdown on illegal immigration, not only almost entirely closing the borders but also arresting hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens already in the United States. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its subsidiaries, like ICE, have primarily arrested those whom they dub the “worst of the worst,” including murderers, rapists, child abusers, drug traffickers, gang members, terrorists, and other violent and/or serial criminals.
Related: Meet the ‘Worst of the Worst’ ICE Arrested on Christmas
Indeed, the Trump administration has caused 2.5 million illegal aliens to leave the United States, including about 605,000 deported and 1.9 million self-deported. Federal immigration officers accomplished all this at a time when attacks on ICE officers rose by over 1,150%. For context, the Biden administration let in around eight million illegal aliens, and actually probably more, since there were hundreds of thousands of “got-aways.” The Trump administration had a Herculean task ahead of it, and federal officers and officials have done heroic work in the first 11 months of Trump’s term.
But enforcing immigration law is not the only way that the Trump administration has addressed rampant crime, which always increases wherever Democrats are in charge. We all know how deploying the National Guard and federalizing the police force in Washington, D.C., brought down violent crime significantly within just a few days. Yet instead of being grateful that murders and carjackings were down, Democrats screamed that Trump was inciting violence. That is how desperate they were to maintain crime levels.
Speaking of being desperate to maintain crime levels, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Portland officials, and Fairfax County (Va.) officials are among those who have blocked or actively interfered with federal crime crackdowns.
Whether they refused National Guard deployment, enforced sanctuary policies, or opposed stricter penalties for violent criminals, all of these individuals and many more leftists across the nation made it clear their allegiance was with criminals instead of law-abiding citizens. In spite of their resistance, the Trump administration went on arresting criminals anyway.
Donald Trump also moved to end cashless bail and signed into law the Laken Riley Act, ensuring arrests and deportation of violent foreign criminals. As of last week, arrests under the act had reached 17,500.
All we needed was a president willing to enforce our laws.
