Number of murders in use due to illegal immigrants.

1. The claim being tested — '4,000 murders' and where it came from

A widely circulated figure—often stated as roughly 4,000 murders per year by undocumented immigrants—has been specifically challenged by Reuters, which found no evidence to back that national total and demonstrated that if 4,000 homicides were committed by an estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants, the implied homicide rate would be 36.4 per 100,000, far higher than U.S. averages and therefore implausible without substantial corroborating data ^[1].

2. What multiple research efforts actually show about scale and direction of the effect

A growing body of research summarized by Migration Policy and other analysts finds that immigrants, including the undocumented, generally commit less crime or have lower homicide conviction rates than native‑born Americans; state‑level analyses (for example, Texas studies) and national syntheses support the conclusion that immigrant criminality is not higher and in many measures is lower than that of U.S.‑born residents ^{[2] [1] [3]}.

3. Specific empirical markers used by researchers and agencies

Researchers use different metrics—homicide convictions, arrest rates, and victimization systems—and studies have produced low homicide conviction rates for undocumented groups in some jurisdictions (for instance, a Cato analysis found a homicide conviction rate of about 2.2 per 100,000 for undocumented people in Texas versus 3.0 per 100,000 for native‑born in the same years) while others emphasize that murder is a rare event and rates fluctuate, making year‑to‑year comparisons noisy ^{[1] [4] [3]}.

4. Broader crime trends, political framing, and counterclaims

National analyses and advocacy groups note that overall crime declined even as the immigrant share of the population rose, which runs counter to narratives of a migrant‑driven crime wave; for example, the American Immigration Council reports falling crime rates coincident with rising immigrant shares through 2022, and the Brennan Center and Council on Criminal Justice analyses show crime declining in many jurisdictions after 2022 despite highly publicized incidents ^{[5] [6]}. At the same time, some media accounts and political actors point to increases in arrests of migrants for homicide in certain periods, noting trends during particular administrations or fiscal years, but those accounts do not establish a robust, consistent national total attributable to undocumented status ^[7].

5. Data gaps, measurement problems, and why a single national murder count is elusive

Compiling a precise national number of murders “due to” undocumented immigrants is hampered by data limitations: law‑enforcement reporting systems do not consistently record immigration status at scale, agencies differ in methods, conviction versus arrest counts diverge, and homicide is a rare event that fluctuates—scholars and the U.S. research literature warn that these methodological constraints prevent producing a reliable, single national annual tally ^{[4] [8] [1]}.

6. Bottom line — what can be stated with confidence

There is no credible, verified figure showing that thousands of U.S. murders each year are committed by undocumented immigrants; peer analyses and fact‑checks reject the 4,000 claim as unsupported, and the preponderance of research summarized by Migration Policy, Cato, academic analyses, and fact‑checkers finds that undocumented immigrants do not have higher homicide rates than native‑born Americans and in many measures have lower rates ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Where individual violent crimes by noncitizens occur they merit investigation and prosecution, but available evidence does not justify broad assertions that undocumented immigration is driving large annual counts of homicides nationwide ^{[6] [5]}.