FOLLOW UP REPORT: An American Is Dead in Ireland — and the Crime Numbers Tell a Larger Story

Original Report: New Trouble in Ireland

IRELAND: July 9, 2026

An American woman has been murdered in Ireland.

Her name was Jamey Carney. She was 43, originally from New York, and living in Killarney, County Kerry, with her 13-year-old daughter, who reportedly found her dead inside their home. Gardaí, the Irish police, are now hunting for Ahmad Alsaqer, a 28-year-old Jordanian asylum seeker identified in reporting as the prime suspect. Early reports suggested he may have fled toward Northern Ireland; later reports said investigators believe he may have left through Dublin Airport for Istanbul, possibly en route to Jordan or Syria.

As we have been reporting, Ireland has become a petri dish for the impact of mass migration - small, once highly homogeneous, and now showing changes Americans should watch carefully as Ireland is bound up with our bloodlines, tourism, culture, universities, and business. Of course, no broad conclusion should be drawn from any single incident.

So, let’s not do so.

Let’s look instead at statistics for two crimes Americans have learned over the last few years are disproportionately connected to recent immigration surges: attacks on women and fraud. Both have increased dramatically in Ireland since 2022, when migrant asylum claims there began to surge.

First, rape.

The official rape number in Ireland rose from 917 recorded rapes in 2021 to 1,016 in 2025. That is an increase of 99 recorded rapes - almost 11%. Adjusted for population, that increase would be the equivalent of roughly 6,300 additional recorded rapes in the United States.

Irish officials and advocacy groups have tried to soften the rise by suggesting that the higher numbers may partly reflect a greater willingness to report. That may be true. Or of course, it could just reflect the fact that more women are being raped. Either way, however, Ireland recorded 1,016 rapes in 2025 - which appears to be the highest single-year rape count in recorded Irish crime history.

Non-sexual attacks on women have also risen steadily since 2022, though at a slower overall rate of 2.3%. But a report last week showed that number has now spiked as well, with the first three months of 2026 up 8% from the same period last year. That translates to about 27 attacks on women a day. In a small country long regarded as safe, familiar, and welcoming, those are, as Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly stated last week, “absolutely shocking numbers.”

So here is the first conclusion: American tourists, American businesses, and American universities need to recognize that Ireland’s risk profile for women may now be changing. While it is clearly still safer than many places, it is no longer just a charming little place with pubs, churches, music, and Guinness. It now comes with an increased risk - no matter how officials attempt to soften the edges.

Then there is the other crime Americans have become all too familiar with from our own open-border disaster: fraud. And in Ireland, the fraud statistics are almost beyond belief.

Since 2011, banks and financial institutions in Ireland have had a legal duty to report fraud-related incidents to the Gardaí. Those numbers are tracked by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

Between 2011 and 2022, the fraud statistics were reported by CSO as one combined category that included fraud reports by individual victims as well as fraud reported by banks and financial firms. During that period, the combined annual number ranged from about 4,900 in 2016 to about 17,500 in 2021 - with the period averaging roughly 8,000 fraud incidents per year.

In 2023 however, Ireland had to change the way they reported fraud claims because the amount of institutional fraud incidents exploded. The amount of institutional fraud was so overwhelming that the country simply did not have the ability to process them all. So, the government separated out the personal claims and continued to report those, but has not formally reported the amount of institutional fraud incidents since 2023.

Last week however, the Gardaí gave us a glimpse into the scope of the problem. They reported that in June 2025 the backlog of bank-reported institutional fraud incidents was approximately 140,000. That was just the backlog in June 2025 - that 140,000 figure did not include the claims the Gardaí had already processed between 2023 and June 2025. Considering the rate at which Gardaí state they are processing the incidents (almost 80,000 over the last year), it seems reasonable to assume the total figure of institutional fraud incidents between 2023 and June 2025 alone likely exceeded 200,000.

So Ireland went from an average of about 8,000 total fraud claims per year - roughly 24,000 over three years - to a figure likely exceeding 200,000 institutional fraud incidents in the three years since asylum claims spiked. That is more than an eightfold increase, or roughly 733%.

In response, Ireland is now considering legislation to “fix” the problem by relieving banks of their duty to report fraud incidents unless it is over a certain amount. In other words, the proposed fix is simply not to look.

The second conclusion is this: Americans - and American institutions - need to be extremely careful with any transactions involving Irish financial firms.

Is it possible that the increase in violence against women and fraud has nothing to do with mass migration? That would be an awful coincidence. The bottom line is this: An American woman is dead in Killarney, and the suspected fugitive is one of the nearly 60,000 asylum claimants who have entered Ireland since 2022. Rape reports since 2022 are up over 10%, while fraud is exploding through the financial system. And the Irish government’s answer is to tell everyone to squint their eyes.

This is not your grandparents’ Ireland anymore.