President Donald Trump has used mischaracterizations of sanctuary cities as a justification for occupation-style deployments of federal immigration agents in cities like Los Angeles, Portland and Minneapolis.
Last month, President Trump announced his intention to withhold federal funding from immigrant sanctuary cities — describing them as chaotic and dangerous.
“They do everything possible to protect criminals at the expense of American citizens,” he said. “It breeds fraud and crime and all of the other problems that come.”
But several studies show that sanctuary jurisdictions are not more dangerous than their non-sanctuary counterparts. In fact, people who live in sanctuary cities tend to experience less crime and have higher incomes.
The Border Brief recently featured some of that research.
The first study was produced in 2017, during the first Trump term. UC San Diego researcher Tom Wong analyzed FBI and census data to compare sanctuary and non-sanctuary jurisdictions.
“What the data showed was that sanctuary counties actually were safer and had less crime than comparable non-sanctuary counties,” Wong said.
A 2020 follow-up study reached a similar conclusion.
In 2024, Wong surveyed undocumented immigrants to gain more insights into why the data show that sanctuary jurisdictions tend to be safer. The survey results suggested community trust is a significant factor.
“You can trust law enforcement more if you need their help because local law enforcement won’t result in something like an immigration-related arrest,” he said.
