How many illegal immigrants have killed in the US from 2015 on?
Executive summary
The question as posed is ambiguous — it could mean “how many killings have been committed by people in the United States who are undocumented” or “how many undocumented people have themselves been killed” — and there is no single, reliable national count for either interpretation because federal and state data rarely record immigration status consistently [1]. Available sources show isolated tallies (for example, U.S. reporting compiled by media and agencies) and a body of peer‑reviewed research indicating undocumented immigrants do not have higher homicide rates than the U.S.‑born population [1] [2] [3].
1. What the numbers people cite usually refer to — and why they’re unreliable
Viral claims such as “4,000 people are killed every year by undocumented immigrants” have been fact‑checked and found to lack verifiable evidence: Reuters concluded there is no support for the 4,000‑per‑year figure and noted that most national crime reporting systems do not record immigration status, so such extrapolations are speculative [1]. Federal summaries like U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s criminal‑alien statistics document arrests and conviction histories in certain enforcement contexts but are not a comprehensive count of homicides nationwide committed by undocumented people [4] [5].
2. What independent tallies and media reporting have produced
Some aggregated counts exist for restricted timeframes and definitions: Newsweek reported that, according to U.S. government figures, there were 162 homicides attributed to migrants since fiscal year 2017 as of March 2024, a number drawn from departmental compilations but constrained by the fiscal‑year window and by how “migrant” or “undocumented” is defined and reported [6]. These targeted tallies are useful for specific debates but cannot be taken as exhaustive national totals from 2015 onward without caveats about coverage and methodology [6].
3. What rigorous research says about homicide rates among undocumented immigrants
Peer‑reviewed and institutional studies consistently find that undocumented immigrants generally have similar or lower rates of homicide and incarceration than U.S.‑born residents: a Cato Institute analysis and other academic work reported homicide conviction rates for undocumented people in Texas that were at or below rates for native‑born Americans (e.g., roughly 2.4 per 100,000 in 2015 versus 2.8 for the implied native‑born comparison) [2]. Broader reviews and meta‑analyses indicate immigrants overall have lower offending and incarceration rates, a finding echoed by Migration Policy Institute and NIH‑archived criminology research [7] [3] [8].
4. The crucial data gaps that prevent a single national answer
A national, year‑by‑year count of homicides committed by people who were undocumented from 2015 onward does not exist in authoritative public datasets because most state and local law‑enforcement records do not systematically record immigration status, Texas being one of the few exceptions used in multiple studies [1] [8]. Federal enforcement datasets track apprehensions, arrests, and conviction histories in certain contexts but are not equivalent to a verified national homicide ledger by immigration status [4] [5]. Researchers therefore rely on proxy measures (Texas records, subset analyses, conviction rates) and statistical modeling, which can show trends but not produce a definitive national count [9] [3].
5. Balanced conclusion and what the public record can reliably support
The public record does not support a single, defensible number for “how many undocumented immigrants have killed in the U.S. from 2015 on”; targeted tallies (for example, 162 homicides by migrants cited for FY2017–2024 reporting) exist but are limited in scope and method [6]. At the same time, multiple fact‑checks and academic studies demonstrate that broad claims of thousands of undocumented‑perpetrated killings per year are unsupported and that, where measured, undocumented populations tend to show equal or lower homicide conviction rates than the native‑born population [1] [2] [3]. Policymaking and public debate would benefit from clearer, standardized data collection on immigration status in criminal records; until then, any single national “count” must be treated as provisional and method‑dependent [1] [5].