How many undocumented immigrants within the US have been convicted of crimes and what is the nature of said crimes?
Executive summary
Available research and official counts do not give a single nationwide tally of how many undocumented immigrants in the U.S. have been convicted of crimes; state and federal datasets show two consistent patterns: when immigration status is observed, undocumented people are arrested and convicted at lower rates than U.S.-born residents for a wide range of offenses (e.g., Texas data: less than half the rate for violent and drug crimes, one-quarter for property crimes) [1] [2] [3], and enforcement and removal statistics focus heavily on non-violent immigration violations and minor offenses even as agencies highlight removal of people with serious convictions [4] [5] [6].
1. No single national count — fragmentation drives confusion
There is no definitive national number in the sources for “how many undocumented immigrants have been convicted” because data are collected unevenly: Texas keeps case-level immigration-status information and has been the basis for rigorous estimates; federal agencies (CBP, ICE) publish counts of “criminal aliens” and interior removals but frame their figures differently — for example CBP reports criminal-alien encounters across fiscal years and ICE reports arrests and removals in operation summaries — making a single unified conviction total unavailable in current reporting [2] [7] [4].
2. The strongest empirical evidence: lower offending and arrest rates
Multiple peer‑reviewed and government‑funded studies using Texas arrest and conviction records find undocumented immigrants have substantially lower arrest rates than native-born Americans: less than half the rate for violent and drug crimes and about one quarter the rate for property crime in the Texas study (2012–2018) [1] [2] [3]. Broad syntheses by Migration Policy Institute, American Immigration Council and other analysts echo that immigrants overall—documented and undocumented—tend to commit crimes at lower rates than U.S.-born residents [8] [9] [10].
3. Nature of convictions that are on the public record
Where sources break down convictions or arrests, many recorded offenses are non‑violent and immigration‑related: vehicle or traffic offenses, immigration law violations, regulatory offenses and misdemeanors appear frequently in enforcement data [4] [11]. Federal enforcement summaries also list serious convictions among those removed or arrested — assaults, DWIs/DUI, weapon offenses, sexual offenses and murder appear in ICE and DHS releases — but these are presented as subsets of enforcement actions rather than as proof that undocumented people commit serious crimes at higher rates than natives [5] [12] [13].
4. Enforcement metrics vs. underlying crime rates — different questions
ICE and DHS often report numbers of “criminal aliens” arrested or removed to justify enforcement priorities; those tallies mix people with prior convictions, pending charges, and people with no criminal history who violated immigration rules (civil violations), so headline counts can overstate the share with violent convictions [4] [14] [15]. Independent analyses note many people detained or arrested by ICE have no criminal convictions — for example internal reporting and third‑party analyses indicated a substantial share of recent interior arrests involved people without violent convictions [16] [15].
5. Competing narratives and selective use of data
Government statements emphasize removals of people convicted of serious crimes — DHS claimed a high proportion of arrests were “criminal illegal aliens” in some releases — while watchdogs, academics and organizations like the Brennan Center emphasize rigorous studies showing undocumented immigration does not raise violent crime rates [13] [12]. Researchers warn high‑profile incidents are rare and receive outsized media attention; aggregate data show lower offending rates among undocumented populations [17] [18] [19].
6. Limits of the evidence and what’s not in the sources
Available sources do not provide a single, up‑to‑date national count of convictions among undocumented immigrants; they do not resolve how enforcement intensity, local policing practices, or data collection gaps bias comparative rates across states [1] [2]. Sources also do not uniformly separate convictions that occurred abroad from convictions in U.S. courts when agencies label someone a “criminal alien” [7]. Where numbers are cited in enforcement press releases, methodology for classification and the proportion that are immigration‑only violations versus criminal convictions are often not fully documented in the cited materials [4] [5].
7. What this means for policy and public debate
Policy debates should distinguish (a) the proportion of undocumented people with convictions (no single national number in current reporting), (b) the comparative offending rate (strong evidence from Texas and multiple studies that undocumented people offend less than U.S.-born residents) [1] [2], and (c) the composition of recorded offenses (many are immigration or minor offenses in agency tallies even as agencies highlight serious convictions in selected cases) [4] [5]. Decision‑makers and journalists should avoid extrapolating from high‑profile cases to population‑level conclusions; the peer‑reviewed and government‑funded research cited here points to lower, not higher, offending rates among undocumented immigrants [2] [1] [3].