What proportion of migrants processed at the U.S. southern border had criminal convictions, by year and offense type?
Executive summary
Federal border-enforcement data show that people apprehended at the U.S. southern border who have prior criminal convictions are a small minority of total encounters and that the exact share varies year to year; CBP publishes conviction-by-offense tables covering Fiscal Years 2017–2026, and independent tallies place the share of border apprehensions who were “criminal noncitizens” generally below a few percent (CBP; USAFacts) [1] [2]. The convictions reported are concentrated in non‑violent categories (immigration-related, traffic/DUI, and drug offenses), while convictions for violent felonies make up a small fraction of convictions recorded in CBP/ICE datasets (CBP; ICE; FactCheck.org) [1] [3] [4].
1. CBP’s public accounting: what is measured and how
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) maintains tables that record convictions discovered in records checks after Border Patrol apprehensions and organizes them by offense type for fiscal years 2017–2026; those tables explicitly note that some individuals have multiple convictions, so total convictions can exceed the number of arrested “criminal aliens” (CBP) [1]. CBP defines “criminal noncitizens” as people with one or more convictions, whether in the United States or abroad, but only for conduct that the U.S. treats as criminal; encounters of criminal noncitizens are a subset of total Border Patrol apprehensions and ports‑of‑entry inadmissibles (CBP) [5].
2. How large a share of border encounters have recorded convictions — the headline numbers
Independent analyses of CBP data find that criminal arrests of noncitizens represented a low single‑digit share of Border Patrol apprehensions in recent years: USAFacts reports roughly 17,000 criminal arrests in FY2024, equal to about 1.1% of Border Patrol apprehensions through September 2024, and notes that the share of apprehensions that were criminal noncitizen arrests has ranged between roughly 0.5% and 2.7% across the available eight‑year window (USAFacts) [2]. CBP’s own matrices provide the raw conviction counts by fiscal year and offense class, which underpin those percentage calculations (CBP) [1].
3. What kinds of convictions appear in the counts
The convictions CBP and ICE report are dominated by immigration‑related and non‑violent public‑safety offenses: CBP’s conviction tables break down entries into categories such as illegal entry/immigration violations, drug offenses, DUI and other traffic offenses, and various property and violent offenses, and ICE says ERO historically most commonly arrests immigration violators with convictions for DUI, drug possession, assault and non‑civil traffic offenses (CBP; ICE) [1] [3]. Multiple reporting analyses emphasize that convictions for violent felonies form a small portion of the recorded convictions among noncitizens encountered by federal immigration authorities (FactCheck.org; ICE) [4] [3].
4. Trends, caveats and alternative readings
Year‑to‑year variation in the criminal share of border encounters reflects enforcement priorities, processing practices, and data limits: changes in whether people are criminally prosecuted for entry, a rise in administrative expulsions, or increased records checks can shift counts without reflecting a change in underlying offending (American Immigration Council; CBP) [6] [1]. Researchers and policy groups also stress that immigrant populations—authorized and unauthorized—tend to have similar or lower crime rates than the U.S.‑born population, a finding that complicates simple narratives that higher border flows equal higher crime (Migration Policy Institute; Brennan Center) [7] [8]. Additionally, CBP’s data depend on available law‑enforcement databases and the ability to access conviction records from other countries, so convictions may be undercounted or unevenly classified across nationalities (CBP; MPI) [1] [7].
5. Bottom line: by year and offense type, what proportion had convictions
CBP provides year‑by‑year conviction totals and offense‑type breakdowns for FY2017–FY2026 in its public Criminal Noncitizen / Criminal Alien tables, and those data show that the number of apprehended individuals with recorded prior convictions has been only a small percentage of total Border Patrol encounters (CBP) [1]. Independent synthesis finds that the criminal‑conviction share has generally been well under 3% of apprehensions (0.5%–2.7% across an eight‑year span), with FY2024 at about 1.1% (USAFacts; CBP) [2] [1]. For details by fiscal year and the full offense breakdown, the CBP criminal‑noncitizen tables are the source of record; summaries here reflect those CBP tallies and independent aggregations (CBP; USAFacts) [1] [2].