What is the share of immigrants in U.S. arrest and conviction rates compared to native-born citizens?
Executive summary
Research across government and academic sources shows immigrants — including undocumented immigrants — are generally arrested, convicted and incarcerated at rates equal to or lower than native‑born Americans. Multiple empirical studies and reviews find undocumented immigrants arrested at less than half the rate for violent and drug crimes and substantially lower for property crimes [1] [2] [3].
1. What the official enforcement numbers actually measure
Federal enforcement agencies publish counts of arrests, encounters and removals, but those figures do not directly translate into population crime rates. ICE and CBP data document enforcement events (administrative arrests, Border Patrol apprehensions and “criminal noncitizen” encounters) and often categorize arrestees by citizenship or conviction history — not by a consistent denominator of foreign‑born population size — so raw arrest totals can mislead when comparing immigrants and native‑born residents [4] [5] [6].
2. Academic and independent studies give a different picture
Peer‑reviewed and government‑funded analyses consistently show lower offending and incarceration among immigrants. A Texas study using arrest records that identify immigration status found considerably lower felony arrest rates among undocumented immigrants than legal immigrants and native‑born citizens [2] [7]. A National Institute of Justice summary reports undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native‑born citizens for violent and drug crimes and about one‑quarter the rate for property crimes [1].
3. Long‑run and national analyses reinforce lower incarceration risk
Longitudinal and national research finds immigrants have similar or lower incarceration rates than U.S.‑born people going back many decades. Studies cited by migration scholars and think tanks show immigrants’ incarceration has been at or below native levels since the 19th century and more recent work reports immigrants are substantially less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.‑born individuals [8] [9] [10].
4. Why enforcement totals can be publicized as “high immigrant crime”
Administration and agency releases often emphasize arrest or removal totals to make a policy point. For example, recent federal releases and political statements highlight large numbers of ICE arrests and the share with criminal convictions or pending charges; those communications mix administrative immigration arrests (including visa overstays) and criminal arrests, which can inflate perceptions of criminality among the foreign‑born [4] [11] [12]. Independent trackers and watchdogs note changes in who is arrested — interior versus border arrests and the share without criminal convictions — matter for interpretation [13] [14].
5. Measurement challenges and limits of the evidence
Comparing immigrant and native crime rates requires accurate denominators (how many immigrants of which legal status live in an area) and consistent classification of offenses and convictions; those conditions rarely hold in national enforcement tallies [6] [5]. Texas is one of the few jurisdictions that records immigration status at arrest, which strengthens its comparative findings but may limit national generalizability [2] [3]. Several sources warn about methodological constraints in ICE reporting and the difficulty of using event counts to infer rates [14].
6. Competing narratives and what the evidence supports
Policy advocates and some federal statements stress high arrest counts and frame enforcement as prioritizing “criminal illegal aliens,” while independent research and multiple academic reviews find immigrants are less likely to commit crimes and are arrested and incarcerated at lower rates than native‑born Americans [12] [11] [10] [1]. Both perspectives draw on facts — one on aggregate enforcement outputs, the other on rate‑based, population‑adjusted studies — but the preponderance of peer‑reviewed and government‑funded analyses favors the conclusion that immigrants do not increase crime rates and, for many offenses, have lower offending rates [2] [1] [10].
7. What journalists and policymakers should ask next
Reporters and decision‑makers should demand rate‑based comparisons (arrests or convictions per 100,000 people) that use reliable denominators and clarify whether counts are administrative immigration actions or criminal arrests. They should also distinguish legal statuses, geographic variation and whether data come from enforcement agencies versus independent research [6] [3] [2]. Available sources do not mention a single, unified national dataset that measures arrest and conviction rates by immigration status across all states.
Limitations: this analysis relies only on the provided reporting and studies; it does not include sources beyond those listed and therefore does not address data or research not present in the supplied material.