Where’s the migrant crime in Tarrant County’s ‘border cities’? We asked police about it

In Reality Check stories, Star-Telegram journalists dig deeper into questions over facts, consequences and accountability. Read more. Story idea? RealityCheck@star-telegram.com.

A common refrain among people raising alarms about the border crisis is that every American city is a border city, meaning undocumented immigrants bring elevated crime rates to communities far from the U.S.-Mexico border.

Keller Mayor Armin Mizani and Tarrant County GOP Chair Bo French have both told the Star-Telegram this in relation to border and immigration issues.

The Star-Telegram reached out to 25 police departments in Tarrant County, as well as the sheriff’s office, to ask how the immigration crisis has affected their communities.

Not one could provide data or documentation that show crime rates have increased in their communities as a result of undocumented immigrants.

Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn has told the Star-Telegram that “foreigners in the community” are “impacting law enforcement, yes, impacting our schools, probably, impacting our ER rooms, our infrastructures.”

However, sheriff’s office spokesperson Robbie Hoy was not able to provide data to back up the comments.

“Any influx of people into a community impacts all of these things and puts a strain on resources,” he said in an email exchange. “When we don’t know how many people are coming across our border illegally every day, it would be illogical to assume there isn’t a strain on community resources.”

He was able to clarify Waybourn’s statement that the county has “several illegals in jail for various amounts of crime.”

There were 219 inmates with an immigration retainer in late March, Hoy said. That number represents around 5% of the average jail population.

Speaking at a congressional hearing on the “crisis” at the border in April, Waybourn told lawmakers that violent crimes like homicide, manslaughter, rape, robbery, assault and theft had all decreased last year.

None of the Tarrant County police chiefs who responded to the Star-Telegram’s question of how the “immigration crisis” has affected their communities could point to data or anecdotal evidence that immigrants had caused crime rates to rise or other significant impacts.

“I have no specific incidents where illegal immigration has been involved in any of our daily activities,” said Billy Keadle, assistant chief of the Hurst Police Department.

White Settlement Police Chief Christopher Cook said in an email exchange that he was “not aware of any changes that we have experienced locally” as a result of immigration.

A representative of Crowley police said the department has “no statistical data to show any documented immigration issues.”

Blue Mound Police Chief Antonio Segura Jr. said that he was in his first year on the job and was unaware of any “noticeable effect” in years past.

“However, I can tell you that our officers have not mentioned concerns related to the immigration crisis since I have been here,” he said in an email exchange.

In March, Southlake Mayor John Huffman told the Star-Telegram that it is “demonstrably true” that migrants are trafficking fentanyl to North Texas communities.

Huffman visited the U.S.-Mexico border with Keller Mayor Mizani in November. The lesson that Mizani brought back to North Texas was that “every city in Texas and every city in America has now become a border city.”

The Star-Telegram requested statistics for fentanyl arrests in Southlake. Police there made five arrests for possession of fentanyl since 2020.

Tarrant County law enforcement agencies were unable to provide data to support the narrative that undocumented immigrants bring crime because there is no such data, according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council.

“When you look at the data, the data shows quite strongly — this is specifically data from the Texas prison system — that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than U.S.-born citizens, though at slightly higher rates than people who come through the legal immigration system,” he said. “So we know that there’s really no correlation between increased migrant arrivals and spikes in crime.”

He mentioned crime rate reductions in New York City as the migrant population there rises.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has transported over 100,000 migrants to New York City and other sanctuary cities since 2022 as part of his border initiative called Operation Lone Star.

Migrants have also been transported to Washington, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver and Los Angeles. All of those cities except Los Angeles have reported drops in violent crime rates in 2024. Los Angeles police saw an uptick in violent crimes in March, but the city saw significant decreases in 2023.

Reichlin-Melnick said that the argument that any crime by undocumented immigrants is too much has “a certain strength to it,” but that it ultimately misses the broader picture.

“Because undocumented immigrants commit crime at lower rates, the more undocumented immigrants are in that area, the lower the overall crime rate will be, even if the raw number of crimes might go up slightly,” he said. “They are not drivers of crime.”