Do illegals kill more people then American citizens
Executive summary
Multiple peer-reviewed and government-funded analyses find that undocumented immigrants commit homicides and other violent crimes at substantially lower rates than U.S.-born citizens, with studies using Texas arrest data and national reviews showing undocumented arrest rates for violent crime and homicide well below those of natives [1] [2]. That empirical pattern is robust across several major analyses, though important methodological caveats — including reliance on arrests, geographic concentration of rich data in Texas, and possible underreporting inside immigrant communities — temper any absolute claim about every context [3] [4].
1. What the best available studies actually show about killings and arrests
A high-quality, widely cited study using Texas Department of Public Safety records found U.S.-born citizens were over twice as likely to be arrested for violent crimes and had higher homicide arrest rates than undocumented immigrants during 2012–2018, and National Institute of Justice reporting summarized that undocumented people were arrested at less than half the rate of native-born Americans for violent and drug crimes [1] [2]. Independent summaries from Migration Policy Institute and advocacy research from the immigration-council">American Immigration Council and the Brennan Center likewise report that unauthorized immigrants are less likely to be arrested, convicted, or incarcerated than the U.S.-born population [5] [6] [7].
2. Homicide-specific evidence — rarer events, clearer patterns
When researchers look specifically at homicide, which is rarer and therefore statistically noisier, the Texas-based work and NIJ summaries still show undocumented homicide arrest rates averaging less than half those of U.S.-born citizens across the study window; the PNAS/Texas dataset remains the clearest large-scale empirical source on this question because Texas records immigration status at arrest [1] [2] [3]. National media and academic reviews echo that there is no broad empirical signal linking increases in unauthorized immigration to spikes in violent or property crime [8] [4] [7].
3. Important methodological limits and alternative interpretations
All of the cited work relies largely on official arrest, conviction, or incarceration records — measures that reflect law enforcement activity and reporting patterns as well as offending — and scholars warn that underreporting, differences in policing, and communities’ reluctance to contact police could bias official statistics downward for undocumented groups [2] [4]. Texas is uniquely well‑documented because its system records immigration status at arrest, so national extrapolation uses other methods and assumptions; some critiques note that studies cannot fully rule out localized exceptions or unobserved behaviors that never enter official statistics [3] [4].
4. Single high-profile killings versus population-level trends
Political leaders and media outlets sometimes highlight individual homicides involving migrants to argue for a migrant-linked crime wave; researchers and legal analysts caution that such high-profile cases do not overturn population-level findings showing lower rates among immigrants [8] [7]. Advocacy groups and academic centers further note that conflating individual incidents with aggregate trends can reflect political incentives to scapegoat immigrant groups rather than an evidence-based assessment [6] [7].
5. Bottom line — do “illegals” kill more people than American citizens?
On the balance of available empirical evidence cited above, undocumented immigrants do not kill more people than U.S.-born citizens; measured by arrests, convictions, and incarceration, undocumented individuals have lower rates of homicide and most felony offenses than native-born Americans in the datasets studied [1] [2] [3]. That conclusion is subject to the documented caveats — arrest-based measures, geographic concentration of reliable immigration-status data, and potential underreporting — so the strongest, evidence-based statement is that population-level data do not support the claim that undocumented immigrants commit homicide at higher rates than U.S.-born citizens [4] [5].