Crime rates improved dramatically during Joe Biden’s presidency, and preliminary data suggests the news continues to look encouraging as Donald Trump’s second term gets underway. Common sense might suggest that the White House would be eager to celebrate the developments, touting improved public safety.

But that’s not quite what the public is hearing from the president’s team.

During one of his Fox News appearances this week, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller spoke generally about the administration’s efforts to arrest immigrants, before making a specific claim about a specific city:

We have communities all across this nation that, 20 years ago, before the era of open borders, were completely peaceful, completely stable, thriving middle classes. Look at a place like Minneapolis. Post-mass migration, they are unsafe, they are violent, you cannot use the public parks.

The comments did not go unnoticed, especially among people in Minneapolis who enjoy visiting local parks. (If Miller is looking for a better example of people steering clear of public parks, I might refer him to MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, where local residents were recently forced to flee when federal officers and National Guard troops arrived for reasons that are still unclear.)

What’s more, plenty of observers were quick to note that crime rates across Minnesota have improved considerably in recent years, and Minneapolis, in particular, has seen a significant decrease in violent crime in the first half of 2025.

But perhaps the most pointed response to Miller came from Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, who said in a statement released by her office, “If we wanted a white supremacist’s opinion, we’d ask. But we don’t. So we won’t.”

Moriarty added for good measure, “Also, Minneapolis is great.”

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To be sure, that’s a memorable reaction, but there’s still the larger context to consider. Amid genuinely terrific news on crime rates in cities across the country, Trump administration officials aren’t just failing to brag, they’re pretending that public safety is getting worse, reality be damned.

Consider this exchange between Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York.

There’s no great mystery here: The Trump administration wants people to be afraid, because the more Americans are scared, the more they’re likely to endorse a mass-deportation campaign.

For the White House, in other words, the politics of fear is overriding every other consideration, including the temptation to brag about — and perhaps even try to take credit for — a heartening national trend.