On a special Sunday edition of Cuomo Prime Time, as CNN hosts Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon fretted over President Donald Trump sending troops to the southern border, and the possiblity that armed militias will also go into the area, to ward off the caravan of illegal immigrants, Cuomo actually suggested against all evidence that illegal immigrants are less inclined to commit crimes than legal immigrants, in addition to U.S. citizens.
At 9:53 p.m. Eastern, as the two were being dismissive of concerns about illegal immigrants committing crimes, Lemon commented:
There are criminal elements in all groups, right? And of course we want people to abide by the laws of this country, but we're expecting people -- are we expecting them to be better than the folks who are already here? Because folks who are in America already -- people who were born in America actually commit most of the crimes. Immigrants don't usually commit as much crime.
Cuomo responded: "Illegal immigrants -- illegal entrants especially because they want to stay low on the radar."
While there may be studies on the right and on the left that contradict each other on whether illegal immigrants have a higher rate of committing crimes than citizens, even the studies that liberals like to cite admit that illegal immigrants have a higher rate of committing crimes than legal immigrants as evidenced by libertarian CATO Insitute studies from February and June of this year.
CNN has had a history of repeatedly claiming that illegal immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than U.S. citizens without acknowledging the existence of studies by right-leaning researchers like John Lott and Peter Kirsanow that conclude the opposite.
