Economist and crime researcher John Lott joined Chicago’s Morning Answer with Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson to challenge common claims about immigrant crime rates, discuss the national decline in murders, and weigh in on a high-profile legal battle over Illinois’s ban on AR-15s.
Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and a former adviser at the U.S. Department of Justice, opened the interview by responding to comments made by The View co-host Sunny Hostin, who had claimed immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. Lott agreed that legal immigrants typically commit crimes at low rates but pushed back strongly on the claim when it comes to illegal immigrants.
Citing Department of Homeland Security data, Lott said nearly 10% of migrants in the U.S. under “non-detained” status had criminal records—figures he believes underestimate the problem. He argued that many of those flagged had voluntarily turned themselves in at the border and thus are not the most concerning group. More troubling, Lott said, are the millions of “gotaways” who have entered the country without detection or vetting.
He also criticized the Biden administration’s border policies, citing a reduced presence of border patrol agents and broken monitoring equipment. According to Lott, policies like the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” were more effective because they allowed Customs and Border Protection to conduct criminal background checks with home country cooperation—something ICE lacked the authority to do under the Biden administration.
Turning to broader crime trends, Lott acknowledged that the national murder rate has dropped significantly so far in 2025, a reversal of the record spike in violent crime that began earlier in the Biden administration. He attributed the decline to a variety of factors, including redeploying FBI resources from Washington, D.C., to cities with higher crime rates, easing off DEI mandates in law enforcement hiring, and the replacement of some progressive prosecutors in major cities.
Lott also pointed to stepped-up deportations of criminal non-citizens as a factor. He suggested that fear of deportation may be discouraging some undocumented immigrants from committing new offenses or even participating in the labor market, with job numbers for non-native-born Americans dropping in 2025 compared to substantial growth during the Biden years.
On the topic of gun policy, Lott addressed the ongoing legal challenge to Illinois’s AR-15 ban. He predicted the law would ultimately be overturned, either by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals or the U.S. Supreme Court. He noted that prior Supreme Court precedent supports the idea that commonly owned firearms, like AR-15s, are protected under the Second Amendment.
Lott said the case’s outcome could hinge on the judge appointed to replace Diane Wood on the Seventh Circuit panel, as the other two judges are expected to split along ideological lines. Regardless, he expressed confidence that any ruling upholding the ban would likely be reversed by the high court.
Throughout the interview, Lott returned to a consistent theme: that crime policy should be driven by data, not politics. He criticized what he views as selective or misleading interpretations of immigration and crime statistics in public discourse and advocated for a tougher, more enforcement-focused approach on both the border and in major cities.