By Ted Hesson and Mica Rosenberg
(Reuters) – Donald Trump is highlighting crimes committed by migrants in the U.S. illegally as part of his campaign to win back the White House, repeating rhetoric used during his previous run for the presidency. But studies show immigrants are not more likely to engage in criminality.
WHAT IS TRUMP SAYING ABOUT IMMIGRANTS AND CRIME?
Former U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican challenging President Joe Biden in the November elections, has focused on crimes committed by immigrants in the U.S. illegally as part of his argument for stricter border controls.
Trump says Biden’s policies are overly permissive and has branded crimes committed by immigrants in the country illegally as “Biden migrant crime.”
Recently, Trump and Republicans have focused on the case of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student from Georgia allegedly murdered by a Venezuelan in the country illegally.
The Republican National Committee earlier this month launched a website called “Biden Bloodbath” that highlights anecdotal incidents involving migrants in eight U.S. states, including electoral battlegrounds such as Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
HOW HAS BIDEN RESPONDED?
Biden was interrupted during the State of the Union address in March by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican who demanded Biden acknowledge the murder.
Biden responded by saying Riley was “an innocent woman who was killed by an illegal.” He then asked how many people were killed by “legals” – apparently referencing citizens and others in the country legally.
Biden later said he regretted calling Riley’s accused killer “illegal” and said the term should have been “undocumented.”
Biden’s top border official, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, said at a reporter roundtable last week that he “profoundly” disagrees with efforts “to demonize all migrants based on the actions of an individual.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said earlier this month that violent rhetoric was being used “to tear our country apart.”
DO IMMIGRANTS COMMIT MORE CRIME THAN THE NATIVE BORN?
A range of studies by academics and think tanks have shown that immigrants do not commit crime at a higher rate than native-born Americans.
A more limited universe of studies specifically examine criminality among immigrants in the U.S. illegally but also find that they do not commit crimes at a higher rate.
A selection of recent research:
“Immigration and Crime: Assessing a Contentious Issue,” by Charis Kubrin, a criminology professor at the University of California, Irvine and Graham Ousey, a sociology professor at William & Mary. The 2018 study was published in the peer-reviewed Annual Review of Criminology.
“Law-Abiding Immigrants: The Incarceration Gap Between Immigrants and the US-born, 1870–2020,” by Ran Abramitzky, economics professor at Stanford University and four other researchers. The 2024 working paper was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
“Comparing crime rates between undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and native-born US citizens in Texas,” by Michael Light, sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and two other researchers. The 2020 study was published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Cato Institute research by Alex Nowrasteh and others
HOW RELIABLE IS THE DATA?
Several of 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.
Michael Light, one of the researchers who used the Texas data, said that crime rates would likely vary from state to state, but that the Texas figures were the best available.
The Cato Institute’s Nowrasteh said researchers would have a better idea of the crime rate for immigrants in the country illegally if other states maintained and shared data in the same manner as Texas.
DO ANY STUDIES FIND IMMIGRANTS MORE 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.
The group said in 2022 that both Michael Light and Nowrasteh failed to account for immigrants who were identified as being in the country illegally after they were imprisoned. Nowrasteh contested the CIS critique and said the group double-counted some criminal offenders in the country illegally.
In its own study in 2009, CIS found “there is no clear evidence that immigrants commit crimes at higher or lower rates than others.”
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. The study, by conservative economist John Lott, found immigrants in the U.S. illegally tend to commit more serious crimes and serve longer sentences. But the Cato Institute’s Nowrasteh criticized the findings, saying Lott had included immigrants who had legal status in the U.S. and may have violated the terms of a visa by committing a crime.
IS IT POSSIBLE THAT TRENDS HAVE SHIFTED RECENTLY?
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 of time.
Several researchers mentioned 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.
Michael Light, the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, said U.S. research overall does not indicate immigrants are more likely to commit crime.
“Of course foreign-born individuals have committed crimes,” Light said in an interview. “But do foreign-born individuals commit crime at a disproportionately higher rate than native-born individuals? The answer is pretty conclusively no.”
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington and Mica Rosenberg in New York; Editing by Mary Milliken and Aurora Ellis)
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