How do arrest and conviction rates for undocumented immigrants compare to legal immigrants across U.S. states?
Executive summary
The best peer-reviewed evidence — a Texas statewide study that directly links arrest and conviction records to immigration status — finds undocumented immigrants are arrested and convicted at substantially lower rates than native-born U.S. citizens and are comparable to or lower than legal immigrants [1] [2] [3]. At the national level, systematic state-by-state rate comparisons are largely impossible because only Texas records arrests and convictions by immigration status; federal enforcement counts report raw apprehensions and convictions of noncitizens but do not provide denominators for rate calculations across states [4] [5] [6].
1. The clearest empirical yardstick: Texas’s linked arrest‑conviction data
Researchers using Texas Department of Public Safety records — the only U.S. dataset that routinely records immigration status at arrest across an entire state — report that undocumented immigrants had lower arrest and conviction rates than U.S.-born residents across violent, drug, property and traffic offenses between 2012–2018, and the finding replicates when using convictions instead of arrests [1] [3] [2].
2. What national federal datasets actually measure — counts, not comparable rates
Federal sources such as U.S. Customs and Border Protection and ICE publish tables of “criminal aliens” and convictions booked into federal detention, but these are aggregate counts of apprehensions or convictions of noncitizens rather than population‑adjusted arrest or conviction rates by immigration status in each state, so they cannot be used to compare undocumented and legal immigrants’ per‑capita offending across states [5] [6] [7].
3. Scholarly consensus and reputable centers: immigrants are not driving crime increases
Multiple syntheses and policy centers — including the National Institute of Justice, Migration Policy Institute, Brennan Center, and American Immigration Council — summarize evidence showing immigrants, including unauthorized immigrants, tend to have similar or lower rates of arrest, conviction, and incarceration than U.S.-born residents; these reviews cite the Texas study and other analyses finding unauthorized immigrants are arrested at far lower rates for violent, drug, and property crimes [2] [4] [8] [9].
4. Limitations and caveats that matter for cross‑state comparisons
Because nearly all states do not record immigration status in routine arrest and conviction data, cross‑state rate comparisons require assumptions or model estimates rather than direct observation; enforcement intensity, local policing practices, detention and removal policies, and population denominators (estimates of undocumented and legal immigrant populations) all affect measured arrest or conviction counts and can bias apparent differences [4] [10] [5].
5. Political use of enforcement counts — context and implicit agendas
Aggregate “criminal alien” counts published by agencies like CBP and ICE can be—and often are—cited in policy debates to suggest a crime wave tied to migration, but those counts do not establish per‑capita higher offending by undocumented immigrants and can reflect enforcement focus and record‑matching practices; critics warn such figures can be presented with a law‑and‑order framing that obscures the lack of population‑adjusted comparisons [5] [6] [8].
6. Bottom line: what can be stated with confidence and what cannot
It can be stated with confidence, based on the best empirical state‑level data, that undocumented immigrants in Texas were arrested and convicted at lower rates than U.S.-born residents and similar to or lower than legal immigrants on multiple offense types [1] [3] [2]. What cannot be robustly asserted from available public data is a comprehensive, state‑by‑state ranking of arrest and conviction rates for undocumented versus legal immigrants nationwide, because only Texas provides direct, population‑linked arrest/conviction records by immigration status and federal enforcement statistics report counts without denominators [4] [5].