Study finds no crime increase in cities that adopted 'sanctuary' policies, despite Trump claims

Cities that have adopted “sanctuary” policies did not record an increase in crime as a result of their decision to limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, according to a new Stanford University report. The findings appear to rebut the Trump administration’s rhetoric about the policies’ dire effects on public safety.

The study is one of the first to measure those effects by looking at data on violent crime and property crime. Researcher David K. Hausman compared statistics across more than 200 sanctuary counties and jurisdictions between 2010 and 2015, when the policies were adopted in many U.S. cities with a large number of residents living in the country illegally.

The data show that the policies were effective at limiting deportations of nonviolent offenders but did not result in higher crime rates in those cities. And Hausman found that violent criminals continued to be deported at the same pace because the sanctuary policies do little to prevent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials from taking those offenders into custody.

“Sanctuary policies do serve a protective role, but there’s not the cost to public safety that critics claim,” Hausman said in an interview. His findings were published in the academic journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/sanctuary-city-study-immigration-crime/2020/10/21/5810d13a-12fa-11eb-82af-864652063d61_story.html