Trump credits prison transfers for US murder low, but decline came first

President Donald Trump has credited transfers to a prison in El Salvador with bringing down murder and other crime in the United States. The US murder rate did tie a historic low in 2025, but the decline began before those transfers. Falling crime alone does not establish the transfers’ separate contribution. [1] [3] [5] [9]

In a Truth Social post published on 25 September 2026, Trump said sending people he called “Killers, Drug Dealers, and Thugs” to the place shown in an accompanying video was why murder and other crimes were at “Record Lows”. Salvadoran outlet TCS Ahora identified the footage as showing detainees being taken to CECOT, El Salvador’s high-security prison. The same video file had appeared in an archived Trump post in April 2025. [1] [2] [11]

The FBI estimated the 2025 US murder rate at 4.1 per 100,000 people, tied with 1955 and 1956 for the lowest rate since its national estimates began in 1936. Estimated murder offences fell 18.1% from 2024. Robbery, burglary and some other offences reached 20-year lows, but the aggravated-assault rate was higher than it had been in each year from 2013 to 2015. Preliminary FBI figures show a further fall in murders in the first half of 2026; they are not a completed annual result. [3] [4]

Murder offences had already fallen an estimated 14.9% in 2024, before the documented CECOT transfers began in March 2025. The Council on Criminal Justice dates the broader decline in its city data to the second half of 2022. Those earlier falls cannot have been caused by the transfers, though they do not rule out a later contribution.