Which federal agencies, if any, have proposed or opposed mandatory tracking of crime by perpetrator immigration status?
Executive summary
Multiple federal actors have either explicitly pushed for more systematic tracking of immigration status in criminal contexts or developed programs that functionally collect immigration-related data, while other federal programs, academic researchers, and many local jurisdictions have resisted—or at least not implemented—mandatory tracking because of legal, practical, or policy concerns [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Federal law-enforcement and immigration agencies advocating for status-linked data collection
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other components of the Department of Homeland Security promote partnerships and programs—like 287(g) and the Criminal Alien Program—that depend on sharing or collecting immigration status information about individuals arrested or incarcerated, making ICE a clear proponent of collecting status-related criminal data [1] [5]. The Department of Justice under recent directives has signaled a renewed emphasis on immigration prosecutions and "enhanced statistical tracking" as part of new enforcement initiatives, indicating DOJ-level support for more granular tracking of cases involving noncitizens [2]. Congressional hearings convened by the House Oversight Committee featured members explicitly demanding that jurisdictions "ask" about immigration status and record it when arresting people for crimes—representing political pressure from the legislative branch to institutionalize such data collection, at least in oversight rhetoric [6].
2. Federal public-health and victim-reporting systems collect related but limited information
Some federal systems already collect nativity or immigration-related variables without explicitly endorsing a policy of mandatory criminal tracking by perpetrator status; for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) includes respondent nativity in violent-death data, which provides a partial data stream on noncitizen victims though not a comprehensive program for perpetrator-status tracking across all crimes [3]. DHS information about immigration options for crime victims and ICE’s VOICE office likewise record immigration-related details for victim services and custody notifications, but those are functionally distinct from a universal mandate to record perpetrator immigration status at arrest [7] [8].
3. Local practices and academic research resisting mandatory status tracking
Multiple witnesses at oversight hearings admitted they do not keep records of the immigration status of people they arrest, underscoring that many local law-enforcement agencies have neither the systems nor the political will to track status—and that absence has been noted publicly by lawmakers pressing for change [6]. Academic research and criminal-justice scholars warn that federal-local immigration enforcement collaborations—like Secure Communities and 287(g)—can discourage immigrant communities from reporting crime and cooperating with police, a practical and policy-based argument many jurisdictions cite when declining to collect immigration status data at arrest [4].
4. Advocacy groups and policy analysts challenge the premise and utility of mandatory tracking
Advocacy organizations and independent researchers argue that studies repeatedly show immigrants are not more likely to commit crime and that conflating immigration status with criminality risks misinformation and policy harm—an implicit critique of proposals that would make immigration-status tracking routine for criminal incidents [9]. Migration Policy Institute documentation that only Texas records criminal arrests and convictions by immigration status at the state level highlights how rare routine tracking is and casts doubt on the feasibility of national mandates without major legal and systems changes [10].
5. The practical and political landscape: not a single unified federal stance
The documentary record shows a split: DHS components and the DOJ’s recent enforcement memos and programs favor more targeted data and tracking tied to immigration enforcement goals [1] [2] [5], while public-health systems, many local police departments, scholars, and civil-society groups question the wisdom or practicality of mandatory, universal perpetrator-status tracking and in some cases explicitly avoid it to preserve community policing and data integrity [3] [4] [10] [9]. Reporting from Congressional hearings and federal program pages demonstrates policy momentum among certain federal actors and lawmakers toward more tracking, but there is no evidence in these sources of a single federal agency having implemented a universal mandatory requirement that all law enforcement record perpetrator immigration status across all crimes [6] [1] [2].