How do arrest rates for documented immigrants compare to undocumented immigrants and U.S.-born citizens?
Executive summary
Multiple empirical studies — most notably a detailed Texas arrest-data analysis published in PNAS and summarized by the National Institute of Justice — find that undocumented immigrants are arrested at substantially lower rates than native‑born U.S. citizens and generally lower than or similar to documented immigrants: for violent and drug crimes undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of U.S.‑born citizens and for property crimes at roughly one‑quarter the rate [1] [2]. National research on incarceration and multi‑decade analyses reach a consistent conclusion that immigrants overall are less likely to be incarcerated than the U.S.‑born population [3] [4].
1. The clearest empirical finding: lower arrest rates for undocumented immigrants in Texas
A uniquely comprehensive dataset from the Texas Department of Public Safety — the only state system that records immigration status for all arrestees — shows undocumented immigrants had the lowest felony arrest rates across violent, property, drug, and traffic categories from 2012–2018, with native‑born citizens arrested at more than twice the rate for violent crimes and roughly four times the rate for property crimes relative to undocumented immigrants [1] [5]. The Office of Justice Programs summary and the peer‑reviewed PNAS article both report that these differences are robust across alternative population estimates and offense classifications [6] [1].
2. National studies and incarceration data tell the same broad story, with nuance
Beyond Texas, scholars analyzing longer historical and national incarceration records find that immigrants — including unauthorized migrants in many studies — are incarcerated at lower rates than U.S.‑born people; some work reports immigrants are 33–60 percent less likely to be incarcerated depending on period and method [7] [3] [4]. Advocacy and policy organizations have synthesized this literature to conclude immigrants do not raise crime rates and often have lower offending indicators than the U.S.‑born at multiple geographic scales [8] [9].
3. Important methodological caveats: “arrests” are an imperfect proxy for offending
Scholars and federal summaries explicitly warn that arrest rates reflect both criminal behavior and law‑enforcement activity — who is policed, charged, and recorded — so arrests are an imperfect measure of true offending [2]. The Texas work acknowledges this limitation while arguing that its recorded immigration‑status checks give unusually clear comparative arrest rates; nonetheless, differences in policing intensity, reporting rates, or selective charging could influence observed arrest disparities [1] [5].
4. Generalizability and the risk of overreach
Texas is uniquely suited to this analysis because of its mandatory immigration‑status recording in arrest files; that strength also limits simple generalization to other states where status is not uniformly recorded [1]. Multiple studies across time and place, however, point in the same direction: immigrants as a group are not driving higher crime or incarceration rates nationwide, but the precise magnitudes and mechanisms can vary by local policing, demographic composition, and migration patterns [3] [4].
5. Competing narratives, political context, and what the evidence does and does not settle
Political rhetoric often treats undocumented migration and crime as tightly linked; the empirical literature, including government‑funded research and independent academic studies, does not support that framing and instead finds lower arrest and incarceration rates for immigrants [2] [1] [7]. That said, these studies do not imply immigrants are uniformly law‑abiding in every context, nor do they explain localized high‑profile incidents; researchers and analysts caution against extrapolating individual cases into population‑level claims. Advocacy groups and think tanks may emphasize different parts of the literature for policy ends — immigration‑friendly groups highlight the consistently lower rates [8] [9], while critics point to data limitations and call for more comprehensive national status tracking — an implicit agenda that should factor into interpretation [2] [1].