On Migrants and Crime, New York Times Sends Mixed Messages

Plus, war against merit gets results in Boston; Globe discovers anti-Israel Stalinists

The Wednesday New York Times waddles in with a news article by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac about the same Donald Trump-Elon Musk conversation that was covered in Monday’s issue of The Editors. From the Times article:

“Mr. Musk used the chat to showcase his own political views, including on climate, foreign policy and federal spending. He nudged Mr. Trump to soften his rhetoric on immigrants but also agreed with Mr. Trump’s assessment that immigration at the southern border contributed to crime, though academic studies have not supported the idea.”

What would we do without “academic studies”?

Elsewhere in the Wednesday Times comes a piece headlined “Men Charged Over Assault of Woman at Boardwalk”:

David Davon-Bonilla, 24, was charged with first-degree rape, assault, sexual abuse, menacing and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, the police said. He had pleaded guilty to sexual assault in an attack at a migrant shelter last year.

Leovando Moreno, 37, was charged with third-degree assault for striking the 34-year-old boyfriend with the metal pipe, according to the criminal complaint. He was also charged with second-degree menacing, second-degree harassment and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, the police said.

Both men are homeless, the police said. They had not been arraigned as of Monday afternoon, and no lawyers were listed for the two in Brooklyn Criminal Court.

Mr. Davon-Bonilla, a migrant from Nicaragua, whose previous police and court records were under the first name Daniel, was charged last year with attacking a woman at the migrant shelter in Brooklyn, according to a criminal complaint. Mr. Moreno, who is originally from Mexico, was arrested in New Jersey in 2022 for public lewdness on the Seaside Heights boardwalk, according to police records.

It’s one thing for the Times or academics to insist that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans. That could be; I’m the grandson of a law-abiding immigrant, and I know and like plenty of other law-abiding immigrants. But for the Times to fact-check or Times-splain aggressively, in a political news article, in response to merely the “assessment that immigration at the southern border contributed to crime” seems excessively heavyhanded. It’s almost as if the Times is partisan against Trump and in favor of open borders, rather than an impartial, neutral platform. One senses that the Times reporters, or their editors, are worried about the danger that if any readers get the mistaken impression that migrants contribute to crime, the readers might make the error of voting for Trump.

The Conger and Mac Times team hyperlink to a Times piece headlined “The Myth of Migrant Crime.” For the victim of the alleged rape, it’s no “myth.”