Former U.S. President Donald Trump has made claims that migrants in the United States who are illegally residing in the country are responsible for an increase in violent crime. Trump has repeated this rhetoric as part of his campaign to become the President once again, echoing his previous run for the presidency. However, several studies have shown that such immigrants do not have a higher tendency toward criminal activities.
Trump, a Republican who is currently challenging President Joe Biden in the November elections, has been focusing on crimes committed by illegal immigrants as part of his argument for stricter border controls. He believes that Biden’s policies are too permissive and has referred to crimes committed by illegal immigrants as “Biden migrant crime.” Trump has used dehumanizing language to describe these immigrants as “animals” when he talks about alleged criminal acts and has gone as far as saying that they are “poisoning the blood of our country.” This phrase has received criticism as xenophobic and has been compared to Nazi rhetoric. Trump has responded to the criticism by saying that he had no idea that Adolf Hitler had used similar language.
In recent times, Trump and Republicans have been focusing on the case of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student from Georgia who was allegedly murdered by a Venezuelan who was illegally residing in the country. Earlier this month, the Republican National Committee launched a website called “Biden Bloodbath,” which highlights anecdotal incidents involving migrants in eight U.S. states, including electoral battlegrounds such as Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. When asked to comment on research about the issue, Trump’s campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, provided a list of news articles about alleged crimes committed by illegal immigrants.
On the other hand, Biden was interrupted during his State of the Union address in March by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican who demanded that Biden acknowledge the murder of Laken Riley. In response, Biden stated that Riley was “an innocent woman who was killed by an illegal.” He then asked how many people had been killed by “legals,” referring to citizens and others who were legally residing in the country. Later, Biden regretted calling Riley’s accused killer “illegal” and said that the term should have been “undocumented.”
Biden’s top border official, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, has said that he “profoundly” disagrees with efforts “to demonize all migrants based on the actions of an individual.” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated earlier this month that violent rhetoric was being used “to tear our country apart.”
Several studies conducted by academics and think tanks have shown that immigrants do not commit more crimes than native-born Americans. While a more limited number of studies have specifically examined criminality among illegal immigrants in the United States, they have also found that they do not have a higher tendency toward criminal activities. For instance, a 2018 study published in the peer-reviewed Annual Review of Criminology by Charis Kubrin, a criminology professor at the University of California, Irvine, and Graham Ousey, a sociology professor at William & Mary, conducted a meta-analysis of over fifty studies on the link between immigration and crime between 1994 and 2014. They found that there was no significant relationship between the two. The researchers subsequently studied all aspects of the issue in a book published last year that came to similar results. Another study by Ran Abramitzky, an economics professor at Stanford University, and four other researchers, used U.S. Census data and found that immigrants had lower incarceration rates than the U.S.-born over 150 years.
The issue of crime among immigrants in the United States, particularly those in the country illegally, has been the subject of numerous studies and research. A study conducted in 2020 by Michael Light, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and two other researchers, compared crime rates between undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and native-born US citizens in Texas. The study used data from the Texas Department of Public Safety between 2012-2018 and found a lower felony arrest rate for immigrants in the U.S. illegally compared to legal immigrants and native-born U.S. citizens. Additionally, the study found no evidence of increasing criminality among immigrants.
This study is not the only one that has found that illegal immigration does not cause an increase in violent crime. In 2017, Light published a study that used data from all 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., from 1990-2014 and found no link between violent crime and illegal immigration. Similarly, a separate study found no correlation between increased illegal immigration and drunk-driving deaths.
The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, has published several reports that show immigrants in the country commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans. In a recent USA Today op-ed, Alex Nowrasteh previewed new research that found immigrants in the U.S. illegally in Texas were about 26% less likely to be convicted of homicide than native-born Americans from 2013-2022.
It’s worth noting that the studies mentioned above were conducted by academic researchers and published in peer-reviewed journals. The studies draw on a range of data sources, including U.S. Census records and estimates of the number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally.
Several reports examining crime rates for immigrants in the U.S. illegally use data from the Texas Department of Public Safety, which logs immigration status in its arrest records. While crime rates may vary from state to state, the Texas figures were deemed by Michael Light to be the best available.
It’s important to mention that not all studies have found that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes. The Center for Immigration Studies, a research group that supports lower levels of immigration, has argued that researchers using data from the Texas Department of Public Safety undercounted crimes by immigrants in the country illegally. In its own study in 2009, the CIS found “there is no clear evidence that immigrants commit crimes at higher or lower rates than others.” However, a 2018 study using Arizona state prison records from 1985-2017 found that immigrants in the country illegally were more likely to be convicted of a crime.
It’s worth noting that the data used to determine crime rates is typically several years old, so it does not explicitly speak to current or future trends. However, some studies found consistent patterns over long periods. It’s also worth noting that more families and unaccompanied children have been caught crossing the border in the past decade, groups that are statistically less likely to commit crimes.
Overall, while some studies have found that immigrants in the country illegally are more likely to commit crimes, the majority of studies have found the opposite. Additionally, it’s important to remember that immigrants, both legal and illegal, make up a diverse group of individuals who cannot be generalized based on the actions of a few.
