What We Get Wrong About Crime And Immigration With Dara Lind Artwork

The Jeff-alytics Podcast

Can data uncover the real story of crime and justice in America?

Jeff Asher—nationally recognized crime data analyst, co-founder of AH Datalytics, co-creator of the Real Time Crime Index, and author of the Jeff-alytics Substack—sits down with policymakers, academics, journalists, and everyday people to reveal what the numbers actually show. Each episode challenges the myths we believe, exposes the gap between headlines and reality, and asks: what happens when we finally see crime clearly?

New episodes drop every other week! Visit ahdatalytics.com to learn more.

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The Jeff-alytics Podcast

What We Get Wrong About Crime And Immigration With Dara Lind

January 21, 2026

0:00 | 31:07

In this conversation, Dara Lind discusses her extensive background in immigration policy and reporting, the complexities of the U.S. immigration system, and the often misunderstood relationship between immigration and crime. She emphasizes the importance of understanding the historical context of immigration policy, the judicial responses to enforcement actions, and the public's perception of immigrants in relation to crime. Lind also shares her personal journey into immigration advocacy and the challenges of effectively communicating these issues in today's media landscape.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

Immigration policy often leads to unanticipated consequences.
The role of the federal judiciary in immigration enforcement.
What statistics truly say about crimes committed by native-born citizens v. crimes committed by immigrants?
How the chilling effect on immigrant communities leads to underreporting of crime.
Do public perceptions often conflate visible disorder with crime?
How individual tragic cases can skew the broader immigration debate.
The role of the media in overshadowing positive narratives about immigrants.
Rebuilding trust in immigrant communities is a significant challenge for law enforcement.
How the attention economy complicates the storytelling around immigration issues.
Dara Lind's personal journey into immigration advocacy began with a focus on education.

Dara Lind is an immigration policy expert and Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council. Lind has extensive reporting experience covering immigration policy for ProPublica and Vox and co-hosting the Vox podcast “The Weeds.” She has covered immigration in some form since the end of the George W. Bush administration.