{"id":11419,"date":"2025-07-17T19:20:49","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T19:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/stephen-miller-faces-pushback-after-weird-claims-about-immigrant-crime-in-minneapolis\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T19:20:49","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T19:20:49","slug":"stephen-miller-faces-pushback-after-weird-claims-about-immigrant-crime-in-minneapolis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/stephen-miller-faces-pushback-after-weird-claims-about-immigrant-crime-in-minneapolis\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Miller faces pushback after weird claims about immigrant crime in Minneapolis"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-testid=\"byline-container\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/author\/steve-benen-ncpn433601\" tabindex=\"-1\"><picture data-testid=\"picture\"><source media=\"(min-width: 320px)\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_focal-60x60,f_auto,q_auto:best\/newscms\/2021_37\/3505460\/steve-benen-msnbc_1.png\" alt height=\"48\" width=\"48\"><\/source><\/picture><\/a><\/div>\n<div>\n<p id=\"anchor-363b31\">Crime rates improved dramatically during Joe Biden&rsquo;s presidency, and preliminary data suggests the news continues to look encouraging as Donald Trump&rsquo;s second term gets underway. Common sense might suggest that the White House would be eager to celebrate the developments, touting improved public safety.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-337601\">But that&rsquo;s not quite what the public is hearing from the president&rsquo;s team.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-a9154c\">During one of his Fox News appearances this week, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller spoke generally about the administration&rsquo;s efforts to arrest immigrants, before making a specific claim about a specific city:<\/p>\n<section id=\"anchor-536794\">\n<blockquote cite>\n<p>We have communities all across this nation that, 20 years ago, before the era of open borders, were completely peaceful, completely stable, thriving middle classes. Look at a place like Minneapolis. Post-mass migration, they are unsafe, they are violent, you cannot use the public parks.<\/p>\n<p><small><span><\/span><\/small><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/section>\n<p id=\"anchor-b0f0ac\">The comments did not go unnoticed, especially among people in Minneapolis who enjoy visiting local parks. (If Miller is looking for a better example of people steering clear of public parks, I might refer him to MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, where local residents were recently forced to flee <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/troops-federal-agents-briefly-descend-ls-macarthur-park-largely-immigr-rcna217405\">when federal officers and National Guard troops arrived<\/a> for reasons that are still unclear.)<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-047614\">What&rsquo;s more, plenty of observers were quick to note that crime rates across Minnesota have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/local\/twin-cities\/2025\/03\/12\/minneapolis-crime-drop-2025-data\">improved considerably<\/a> in recent years, and Minneapolis, in particular, has seen <a href=\"https:\/\/kstp.com\/kstp-news\/top-news\/minneapolis-begins-year-with-significant-decrease-in-violent-crime\/\">a significant decrease<\/a> in violent crime in the first half of 2025.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-4dd0c0\">But perhaps the most pointed response to Miller came from Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.startribune.com\/watch-senior-trump-adviser-dumps-on-minneapolis-prompting-retort-from-mary-moriarty\/601430663\">who said in a statement<\/a> released by her office, &ldquo;If we wanted a white supremacist&rsquo;s opinion, we&rsquo;d ask. But we don&rsquo;t. So we won&rsquo;t.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-331dc8\">Moriarty added for good measure, &ldquo;Also, Minneapolis is great.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-68706e\">To be sure, that&rsquo;s a memorable reaction, but there&rsquo;s still the larger context to consider. Amid genuinely <a href=\"https:\/\/popular.info\/p\/the-secret-to-baltimores-extraordinary\">terrific<\/a> news <a href=\"https:\/\/manhattanda.org\/manhattan-ended-the-first-half-of-2025-with-drastic-decrease-in-homicides-and-massive-declines-in-shootings\/\">on<\/a> crime <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbclosangeles.com\/news\/local\/los-angeles-approaches-historic-low-in-homicide-rate\/3741552\/\">rates<\/a> in cities across the country, Trump administration officials aren&rsquo;t just failing to brag, they&rsquo;re pretending that public safety is getting worse, reality be damned.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-f49e05\">Consider this exchange between Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-c7b738\">There&rsquo;s no great mystery here: The Trump administration wants people to be afraid, because the more Americans are scared, the more they&rsquo;re likely to endorse a mass-deportation campaign.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-e1e0e5\">For the White House, in other words, the politics of fear is overriding every other consideration, including the temptation to brag about &mdash; and perhaps even try to take credit for &mdash; a heartening national trend.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-activity-map=\"expanded-byline-article-bottom\">\n<div data-testid=\"byline-thumbnail\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/author\/steve-benen-ncpn433601\" tabindex=\"-1\"><picture data-testid=\"picture\"><source media=\"(min-width: 320px)\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_focal-60x60,f_auto,q_auto:best\/newscms\/2021_37\/3505460\/steve-benen-msnbc_1.png\" alt height=\"48\" width=\"48\"><\/source><\/picture><\/a><\/div>\n<p><span data-testid=\"byline-name\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/author\/steve-benen-ncpn433601\"> Steve legs<\/a><\/span><span><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SteveBenen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Steve Benen is a producer for &#8220;The Rachel Maddow Show,&#8221; the editor of&nbsp;MaddowBlog&nbsp;and an BLN political contributor. He&#8217;s also the bestselling author of &#8220;Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans&#8217; War on the Recent Past.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/rachel-maddow-show\/maddowblog\/stephen-miller-faces-pushback-weird-claims-immigrant-crime-minneapolis-rcna219322\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Crime rates improved dramatically during Joe Biden&rsquo;s presidency, and preliminary data suggests the news continues to look encouraging as Donald Trump&rsquo;s second term gets underway. Common sense might suggest that the White House would be eager to celebrate the developments, touting improved public safety. But that&rsquo;s not quite what the public is hearing from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}