How does the 2024 crime rate of illegal immigrants compare to previous years?

1. What the official enforcement numbers say — more encounters, more detainers, not a rate per capita

U.S. Customs and Border Protection publishes a running summary of “criminal alien” apprehensions for fiscal years 2017–2024, documenting counts of interdictions and recorded prior convictions discovered in law‑enforcement databases after apprehension ^[1]. Separately, ICE’s FY2024 report shows the agency issued roughly 149,764 immigration detainers for noncitizens with criminal histories in FY2024, a 19.5% increase over FY2023—figures of enforcement activity that critics and policymakers cite as evidence of rising criminality among noncitizens ^[2]. Those are raw counts of cases and detainers, not population‑adjusted crime rates, and thus can rise because of enforcement priorities, larger migrant flows, or better database checks rather than an underlying jump in offending ^{[5] [1]}.

2. What academic and criminal‑justice studies show — lower offending rates among undocumented immigrants

Government‑funded and peer‑reviewed work contradicts the idea of higher crime by undocumented people: a National Institute of Justice‑funded study using Texas and other state data found undocumented immigrants were arrested at less than half the rate of native‑born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and about one‑quarter the rate for property crimes ^[3]. Broad literature reviews and policy explainers conclude a “significant and growing body of research” shows immigrants overall commit crimes at lower rates than the U.S.‑born population ^{[4] [6]}.

3. Reconciling enforcement counts with rates — differences in measurement matter

The apparent tension between enforcement statistics (CBP/ICE counts) and criminological findings largely reflects different measures: CBP and ICE report counts of individuals encountered who have prior convictions or who trigger detainers, whereas researchers estimate arrest or conviction rates per population and compare undocumented, documented and native‑born groups ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Because there is no comprehensive national dataset that tags every arrest with immigration status, many studies rely on states like Texas that record status—yielding robust but geographically limited estimates—and researchers warn about generalizing beyond available data ^{[3] [7]}.

4. Trends in 2024 versus previous years — no clear evidence of a new crime wave tied to undocumented migration

Taken together, the evidence available for 2024 does not establish that illegal immigrants committed crimes at a higher rate than in prior years; studies continue to find lower offending rates among undocumented immigrants compared with native‑born Americans, and reviewers and fact‑checkers note there is no credible national data showing a surge in immigrant criminality in 2024 ^{[3] [4] [7]}. In other words, enforcement agencies recorded more detainers and continued to encounter criminal histories among some noncitizens in FY2024, but scholarly rate estimates and national‑level syntheses do not support the claim of a rising crime rate caused by undocumented immigrants ^{[2] [3] [4]}.

5. Caveats, competing analyses and why the debate persists

Limitations drive much of the disagreement: national systems do not uniformly record immigration status at arrest, enforcement priorities and border crossings change year to year, and some think tanks publish state‑level analyses (e.g., Texas) with divergent emphases that are sometimes taken as national proof ^{[7] [5] [6]}. Scholars also note that social and economic context, policing practices, and data gaps mean definitive, nationwide year‑to‑year comparisons remain constrained; where rigorous rate estimates exist, they point toward lower offending by undocumented immigrants rather than an increase in 2024 ^{[3] [8]}.