Like the two Democratic presidents before him, President Donald Trump declared April to be National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month with a proclamation issued Friday.
But instead of citing statistics on the real problem of sexual violence in the United States, Trump used his statement to assail immigrants, claiming without evidence that “illegal aliens” have been “one of the leading causes of sexual violence over the last four years,” during the administration of his opponent President Joe Biden.
Parts of Trump’s proclamation read like pulp fiction: “In a treasonous act of betrayal against the American people, the previous administration unleashed an army of gangs and criminal aliens from the darkest and most dangerous corners of the world — causing a dramatic increase of sexual violence in our neighborhoods and communities.”
He added, “These reckless policies empowered some of the most depraved people on the planet to exploit women and children in the most vicious ways imaginable.”
Trump cited three cases wherein a U.S. citizen was murdered, or alleged to be murdered, by men who came into the country from South and Central America.
Each case was horrific: 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray was found strangled in Texas, 22-year-old Laken Riley was found dead in Georgia, and 37-year-old Rachel Morin was found beaten in Maryland. Trump claimed that these three anecdotal pieces of evidence were backed by cases of “many others who were savagely killed by illegal alien crime.”
Trump wrote, “Every act of violence committed against an American at the hands of an illegal alien is a crime beyond all comprehension.”
But statistics do not back up his version of reality.
Sexual assault is a widespread problem in the United States. According to RAINN, an activist group that offers resources to survivors, one out of every six American women has been the target of attempted or completed rape in her lifetime.
Perpetrators of sexual assault, however, are known to the victim more often than not. Most perpetrators are white (57%) or Black (27%), according to RAINN.
The United States Sentencing Commission also puts out annual fact sheets on sexual abuse offenders, revealing that the vast majority of the offenders are U.S. citizens.
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That has been true for years: in 2021, 95.4% of sexual abuse offenders were U.S. citizens; in 2022, 94.9% were citizens; in 2023, the most recent year data is available, 96.2% were citizens. The data shows no spike in immigrant-led sexual violence on a national scale.
“The scapegoating of ethnic and religious minorities is well-tread historical ground in the United States, and immigrants have always made for an easy target,” read an October paper by the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit advocacy group.
“Chinese, Irish, Italian, Muslim, Mexican — all these people and more have been falsely accused of bringing crime into the United States, particularly during times of economic or political unease,” the group said. The paper went on to argue that immigrants are not only less likely to commit crimes themselves, but that their presence has been linked to lower crime rates in the surrounding community.