President Donald Trump repeatedly and falsely conflated immigrants with criminals and made inaccurate statements about Memphis during a roundtable event arranged by the White House in which he claimed credit for crime falling in the city.
Trump, who’s the first sitting president to visit Memphis since Barack Obama in 2011, covered a wide range of topics during Monday’s speech, from the war in Iran to his love for Elvis Presley.
The visit occurred roughly six months after the launch of the “Memphis Safe Task Force,” a coalition of more than 30 federal, state and local agencies meant to drive down Memphis’ already plummeting crime rate.
Some residents responded to the president’s visit with a protest along Sycamore View Road, timed to coincide with his remarks. Although the task force has been supported by local and state Republicans, it has also received criticism from other local officials, activists and community members who have argued against its fairness, necessity and effectiveness.
Here are five times Trump made untrue statements during Monday’s speech as he justified the task force and his immigration policies.
1. Trump said: “They (the Democrats) want to have people come into our country. So many of these people are murderers. They’re drug dealers. They’re the worst criminals anywhere in the world.“
According to the CATO Institute, only 5% of people detained by ICE have violent convictions. Only 8% had either a violent or a property crime.
That national data appears true in Memphis as well. In an MLK50: Justice Through Journalism analysis of two months of task force arrests, just 7% of the more than 600 people detained for “unlawful presence” in the United States had an accompanying criminal charge listed.
2. Trump said: “They came from all over the world. They came from all over. They came from the Congo in Africa. They came from all over South America, Asia, everywhere, and they were from jails and mental institutions. They were drug dealers. They were murderers. 11,888 murderers.”
Trump made a similar claim about immigrants coming from prisons and mental institutions in his State of the Union. NPR reported that there is no evidence of this. He also used the 11,888 figure in the State of the Union, but did not provide context in either speech. It is unclear where the number came from.
NBC News reported that there are more than 13,000 convicted murderers without legal status in the country who are not in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. That number includes people in state and federal prisons and individuals who could have entered the country at any point over the last four decades.
3. Trump said: “Memphis had become known for something else: Being the murder capital of the USA. That’s not a good title. … This catastrophe was a result of years of local politicians, judges and prosecutors who sided with violent criminals over law-abiding citizens. Basically liberals, or now they like to go with the word progressives.”
While Memphis has been called the murder capital of the United States, firearm homicide rates increased across the country from 2019 to 2020. Researchers say there are many factors contributing to the increased murder rates seen between 2019 and 2020, including the instability and disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. And, experts often connect high homicide rates to high poverty rates.
In Memphis and Shelby County, Democrats and Republicans alike have dedicated large percentages of their budgets to law enforcement. And, multiple Republicans held the role of Shelby County’s top prosecutor prior to the election of Democrat Steve Mulroy in 2022.
4. Trump said: “We’re at 75% (decrease in crime), some people say 80, 81%, that still leaves 20%. In another two months, we’re going to be down to almost clear. You’re going to be an almost crime-free city.”
It is unclear where the 75% figure Trump cited came from or to which time period he was referring, but the Memphis Police Department has said that Memphis saw a 41% drop in overall crime and a 30% drop in violent crime in 2025 compared to 2023.
Memphis Mayor Paul Young, who did not attend the roundtable due to what he described as a personal conflict, said “there’s a lot of work that’s still necessary” to address crime, including by creating opportunities for Memphians.
Young also noted that the dramatic decrease in the city’s crime statistics began prior to the task force’s arrival in Memphis.
5. Trump said: “Since I took office, we have successfully arrested or removed from the country over 500,000 hard-blood criminals, and under our leadership last year, the murder rate nationwide saw the single largest decline ever recorded to the lowest level in 125 years. … And this is despite the fact that they allowed 25 million people into our country, many of those people should never have been allowed in our country.”
The Department of Homeland Security has not published any evidence to support the 500,000 figure, according to NPR. The vast majority of the undocumented immigrants that the Trump administration has deported are not violent criminals. The Department of Homeland Security’s own detention data shows that only 53% of immigration detainees had either pending charges or a conviction, including nonviolent offenses like property theft or traffic violations.
While murder rates did plummet in 2025, that decrease began prior to Trump’s January 2025 inauguration and occurred in many cities that did not see a surge in federal troops or National Guard members, according to data analyzed by the New York Times. Studies consistently find no link between immigration and increased crime, according to two professors who analyzed studies from a variety of countries, including the U.S.
Katherine Burgess is the government accountability reporter for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Contact her at katherine.burgess@mlk50.com
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