In the wake of high-profile mass arrests of alleged illegal immigrants in Colorado and Florida during which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents reportedly recovered drugs and guns, the big question as President Donald Trump observes his first 100 days in office is whether violent crime will decline.
According to Fox News, former FBI special agent Johathan Gilliam thinks so. He was quoted by Fox News Digital stating, “Like I said before, the streets, the crime rate will go down as these busts occur. If [illegal immigrants] come here, they’re now going to be charged. Not a free pass anymore. You can see the difference there.”
He subsequently told the news agency, “It does make the streets safer. They’re methodical. They’re going after the most dangerous people that are out there and developing these cases very quickly. At the same time, typically they’re getting other people that are there in those places that are illegal that may not be as dangerous, but they’re being deported as well.”
While lawmakers in Colorado joined Gov. Jared Polis in pushing through one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the country, their efforts apparently did not prevent illegal aliens from having firearms. This is the dilemma faced by Centennial State gun owners; the laws already on the books and the one just signed by Polis only curtail their rights. They do not prevent criminals from being armed.
Published reports say when ICE agents raided an underground nightclub in Colorado Springs. According to the Associated Press, more than 100 people were arrested, and the news agency was careful to identify them as “suspected of being in the United States illegally.” The story also reported the recovery of drugs and an undisclosed number of guns.
Writing at Fox News, journalist Liz Peek, who writes for The Hill, dismissed polls which show Trump’s popularity during his first hundred days has been “in free fall.” Massive deportations of illegal immigrants was one of Trump’s top campaign promises, and Peek says he is fulfilling that mission. She refers to veteran pollster John McLaughlin, who suggests recent polls are biased. Peek notes, “in the new NY Times/Siena poll, which showed Trump with a meager 42% approving of how the president is handling his job, only 37% of the survey group voted for Trump in 2024,” according to McLaughlin.
However, she says another polling outfit, Quantus Insights, “claims to have achieved better accuracy than most polling outfits in 2024, shows in a recent survey that Trump still commands 91% backing from Republicans and that his overall approval is still about 48%, higher than most other surveys.”
How these arrests and deportations will affect the crime problem remains to be seen, but it could reinforce what gun rights advocates have been arguing for decades: Take criminals off the street and out of circulation, and there will be no reason to penalize law-abiding gun owners for crimes they are not committing.
Add to that the recently-announced Justice Department’s Second Amendment Task Force, whose mission was described by Attorney General Pam Bondi, and clearly expectations are high for gun law reform.
“The prior administration placed an undue burden on gun owners and vendors by targeting law-abiding citizens exercising their 2nd Amendment rights,” Bondi said in a prepared statement. “The Department of Justice’s new 2nd Amendment Task Force will combine department-wide policy and litigation resources to advance President Trump’s pro-gun agenda and protect gun owners from overreach.”
But Peek reminds the country, “Trump does not have much time. Since he can serve for only four years, and since he might lose the GOP majority in Congress in less than two years, he entered the Oval Office moving at what is now called Trump Speed on a host of initiatives. He is giving Democrats heartburn by tackling so many ambitions at once.”
