WASHINGTON – Richard Jones is one of America’s most outspoken sheriffs on illegal immigration and crime, echoing themes championed by Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign as the Republican tried to win back the House White.

Jones has been sheriff for two decades in solidly Republican Butler County, Ohio, where Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, was born and raised. Typically dressed in a cowboy hat and sporting a bushy white mustache, he regularly appears in conservative media to criticize Democrats’ border policies.

Jones said crimes committed by immigrants in the United States illegally saddle local taxpayers with millions of dollars in costs related to their apprehension, imprisonment and trial. But he concedes a basic fact obscured by the bombastic rhetoric: He has no evidence that immigrants in his county commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans.

“They’re not committing anything at a higher rate,” he said in an interview. “It’s just another group that shouldn’t be here.”

Numerous studies have shown that immigrants do not commit crimes at higher rates than native-born Americans.

Trump has put what he calls “migrant crime” at the forefront of his campaign as he tries to beat Democrat Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election. The former president frequently cites cases of women and girls allegedly killed illegally by immigrants in the country and has adopted even darker rhetoric in recent weeks.

Trump’s message was amplified by sheriffs and other local law enforcement officials across the country, including some who appeared at his campaign events, lending legitimacy to his claims.

Reuters contacted 12 sheriffs who raised concerns about migrants and crime, including sheriffs in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Michigan, Florida, Idaho and Maryland. But none said they were facing a wave of crime fueled by migrants or could provide proof of it.

Yet Trump escalated the allegations in the latter part of the campaign, spreading false rumors that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets and describing Aurora, Colorado, as overrun by Venezuelan gangs, a claim denied by city officials.

“And you remember when they say no, no, they’re migrants and these migrants, they don’t commit crimes like we do,” Trump said at a rally in Wisconsin in September. “No, no, they make our criminals look like babies. They’re cold killers. They’ll come into your kitchen, they’ll slit your throat.”

American voters say immigration is the top domestic issue the new president should address in his first 100 days in office, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released this month. The message that illegal immigrants in the United States pose a threat resonated with Republican voters and some independents, groups that Trump funds and who will bring him to the White House.

Some 76% of Republicans said illegal immigrants in the United States pose a threat to public safety, while only 15% of Democrats took that position, according to the Reuters poll. Independents were split with 41% agreeing and 49% opposing.

Frank Luntz, a veteran pollster, said Trump has the opportunity to exploit Americans’ concerns about illegal immigration, but he could alienate impressionable voters with vitriolic anti-immigration comments.

“He goes too far to attract people to his right,” Luntz said.

The Trump and Harris campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to a request for data related to illegal immigrants and crime in the United States.

NO SIGN OF A CRIME WAVE

Many sheriffs are elected and their jurisdictions generally cover counties, including rural areas, while cities often have their own police departments.

Jeffrey Gahler, sheriff of Harford County, Maryland, north of Baltimore, has dealt recently with two high-profile murders involving illegal immigrants in the United States: the 2023 killing of Rachel Morin, a mother of five, allegedly by a man from El Salvador, and the 2022 murder of Kayla Hamilton by a gang member also from El Salvador.

Gahler, a Republican who plans to vote for Trump, said tougher border security policies could prevent such crimes, even if they are isolated cases.

“When you add up all these anecdotal cases across the country, there is a problem,” he said.

Gahler said the federal government’s ability to deport immigrants who break laws is an important tool he wants to be able to apply to U.S. citizens outside his county.

“I would prefer to deport them to the city of Baltimore, but that is not in my power,” he said.

Daniel Abbott, sheriff of Van Buren County, Michigan, said at an event with Trump in April that migrants were committing “heinous crimes” in his area. But Abbott, like other sheriffs, has provided no statistical evidence demonstrating the scale of crimes committed by illegal immigrants in the United States.

County records obtained by Reuters through a public records request did not show the immigration status of those arrested.

Van Buren, a rural county in southwest Michigan, has attracted Mexican farmworkers for decades. Several advocates said workers are most likely to be victims of crimes, including exploitation by employers.

INCREASED COSTS

Some sheriffs have complained about rising costs related to illegal immigration. Jones, the Butler County sheriff, said 1,000 immigrants to the United States are in the county jail illegally from 2021 to 2023, at a cost of $4 million. The sheriff’s office did not respond to a request to provide the total number of inmates during that time and the total cost.

The police department in the small town of Whitewater, Wisconsin, saw a 112% increase in tickets issued for driving without a license between 2021 and 2023, which Chief Daniel Meyer said limited the ability to pursue criminal charges. other traffic violations. Meyer also cited several thousand dollars in increased costs for interpretation services.

While Trump-backed sheriffs have focused on illegal immigration, some local law enforcement officials have struggled to quell false rumors.

In the small Pennsylvania town of Tunkhannock, Police Chief Keith Carpenter said his officers were inundated with calls in September after a photo of people walking near a bus in the town went viral on X .com as alleged evidence of a migrant transportation scheme.

Reached by phone, Carpenter said the allegations of criminality were unfounded and that the group appeared to be going to a local Mexican restaurant. REUTERS