Car thefts are plummeting as President Donald Trump’s officials crack down on illegal immigrants and their international theft rings.
Between January and October of 2025, 324,003 cars were reported stolen. That is a 23.2 percent drop over the 421,791 stolen cars reported during the same period in 2024, according to data from the Real-Time Crime Index.
Several factors seem to have contributed to the drop, the first of which has been a series of federal and state efforts to prosecute migrants and international theft rings.
In September, for instance, U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement announced the taking down of an international car theft ring in Michigan.
ICE announced a 12-count indictment that took down a group stealing cars then packing them into shipping containers that were later sent outside the U.S. through our ports. The investigation recovered more than 350 stolen vehicles.
Eight were charged, including Haydar Al Haydari, 41, of Garden City; Karar Alnakash, 43, of Detroit; Abbas Al Othman, 42; of Dearborn Heights; Mohammed Al Hilo, 36, of Detroit; Moustapha Al Fetlawi, 46, of Dearborn Heights; Terrill Davis, 33, of Detroit; David Roshinsky Williams, 32, of Harper Woods; and Mohammed Al Abboodi, 35, of Detroit. All defendants face one count of conspiracy to transport stolen vehicles, and each also faces one or more counts of transportation of a stolen vehicle.
In another federal investigation, a Mexican national in the U.S. illegally was charged in McAllen, Texas, for running a car theft ring. Angel David Salas-Herrera was caught trying to export stolen cars out of the U.S.
A similar investigation shut down a car theft ring in Arizona in June. In a press release about its “Operation Escalading Switch,” the Arizona Department of Public Safety announced the arrests of three foreign nationals, the recovery of 29 vehicles, and the seizure of $2.5 million in cash.
In Dallas, Texas, one citizen and two migrants were arrested for running an auto theft ring. The three were caught operating a VIN number switching scheme in which they replaced VIN tags on stolen cars with tags recovered from a salvage yard. They then sold the cars as “rebuilt” or recovered vehicles.
Along with a mounting number of federal and local investigations into car theft rings, President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration has also put a dent in car thefts as fewer thieves have been allowed to cross the border into the U.S.
Car thefts are notoriously hard to prosecute because law enforcement resources are too thin to do the labor-intensive paper tracking and investigation needed to solve them. In 2023, CBS News found that only ten percent of car thefts are solved.
The U.S. is not the only country dealing with car theft. Authorities in Canada have reported a rise in auto thefts, and according to the BBC, Canada is the “car theft capital of the world.”
In 2023, the international police agency INTERPOL reported that authorities in Europe find 200 cars a week that had been stolen from Canada and shipped overseas.
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