Trump Says Venezuela Sends Criminals to the U.S. Here’s What to Know.
Former President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly stoked fears about a surge of people walking across the U.S. southern border and has singled out one group that he describes as posing a particular threat: migrants from Venezuela.
At the Republican National Convention, with supporters waving signs that read “Mass deportation now,” he repeated a claim for which there is little or no evidence.
Mr. Trump said that crime in Venezuela had declined by 72 percent because the government purged criminals from the country and sent them to the United States. Then he appeared to make a wry joke about a reduction in crime in one country resulting in an increase in another.
“We will have our next Republican convention in Venezuela because it will be safe,” Mr. Trump said when he accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for president. “Our cities will be so unsafe, we will not be able to have it there.”
Has crime declined in Venezuela?
Yes, but there isn’t reliable information to determine how much or why.
The Venezuelan government, which is notoriously opaque, does not release comprehensive crime figures. In 2010, as the country faced a soaring rate of homicides, the authorities punished news organizations for reporting on violent crime.
More recently, the interior ministry has occasionally released average nationwide crime rates, though without specifying the types of crime or how data was collected. In January, the interior minister, Remigio Ceballos, reported that in 2023 the overall crime rate had declined by 16.8 percent.
Some independent organizations have gathered data suggesting that parts of the country have become safer. The number of homicides in Caracas, the capital, declined by 77 percent in 2023 compared to 2018, when a team of researchers began collecting data for a group called Victims Monitor.
Still, no official government information corroborates Mr. Trump’s broader assertions. At times, he has said that crime in Venezuela has declined by 67 percent, while at other times he has said it has dropped 72 percent.
Whatever decline may have occurred is not related to the purge of criminals, according to a report by another independent group, the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence.
Instead, gangs have consolidated their power so there are fewer rivals to fight.
And as poverty has deepened and roughly a quarter of the country’s population has left the country in recent years, gangs do not have as many potential members to recruit among the lower class so they cannot grow their numbers and expand their criminal operations.
Is Venezuela sending criminals to the U.S.?
There is no evidence that the Venezuelan government is systemically or selectively releasing prisoners and expelling them from the country.
It’s a highly unlikely scenario for at least two reasons: The authorities have a relatively weak handle on the prison system and they are actually encouraging Venezuelans to return to the country.
In September, the government started a crackdown to tighten its grip on the penitentiary system. More than half the country’s prisons were at least partially controlled by gangs.
Crime bosses who were incarcerated decided which inmates could be housed in specific prisons, according to an investigation in 2022 by two independent news outlets, Runrunes and Connectas.
The investigation found that criminal groups had filled prisons with amenities, including a pool, a casino, a baseball field, a recording studio, a night club and charcuteries.
One prison, in Carabobo State, about 110 miles west of Caracas, was controlled by an inmate who headed a criminal network that operated within and beyond the prison walls. When he completed a 17-year sentence for first-degree homicide, he chose to stay.
As President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela faced a strong challenge in what has become a disputed election this month, he sought to show voters his support for the working poor, and on his TV show said that he would help people who had migrated return to the country.
“It’s time to come back,” Mr. Maduro said. “The Venezuelan government puts all its power at your service to protect you.”
Has migration from Venezuela contributed to crime in the United States?
There is no credible research showing that increased immigration leads to increased crime, said Ramiro Martínez, a sociology and criminology professor at Northeastern University. Instead, studies suggest that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States.
Mr. Trump has relied on anecdotal evidence to support his claims. During the Republican convention, he cited the case of two Venezuelan men living illegally in the country who were charged in the murder of a 12-year-old girl in Houston.
(In another high-profile case, a 15-year-old boy from Venezuela who had been in New York for about six months was arrested in February and accused of shooting a Brazilian tourist.)
Mr. Trump has said that any crime committed by a person in the country illegally is one too many.
The Biden administration also recently announced a reward of up to $12 million for the arrest of three leaders of the Tren de Aragua, Venezuela’s largest criminal group, some of whose members U.S. officials say are now in the United States.
Migrants are also often victimized by gangs, said Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan investigative journalist and author of a book about the Tren de Aragua gang.
Criminals exploit them by charging them exorbitant fees to cross international borders or by forcing them into sex work.
“Migrants are a very easy population to control,” Ms. Rísquez said. “And it’s easier to take advantage of Venezuelan migrants. They’re fleeing a humanitarian crisis.”
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