How do crime rates for legal immigrants compare to undocumented immigrants and U.S.-born citizens?

1. The empirical headline: immigrants commit fewer reported crimes than the U.S.-born

A landmark analysis using Texas Department of Public Safety records that identify arrestees’ immigration status concludes that undocumented immigrants have substantially lower felony arrest rates than both legal immigrants and native-born citizens—about 400 per 100,000 for undocumented people versus roughly 800 for legal immigrants and 1,000 for U.S.-born citizens—and finds no evidence of rising undocumented criminality during the study period ^{[1] [4]}. The National Institute of Justice summarized the finding similarly: undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and at roughly a quarter the rate for property crimes ^[2].

2. Patterns across studies and measures: consistency with broader research

The Texas study’s results align with a broader empirical literature and recent syntheses: multi-decade and multi-jurisdiction research shows immigrants are generally less likely to be incarcerated or convicted than U.S.-born Americans, with some long-run work finding immigrants 60% less likely to be incarcerated than the U.S.-born in recent periods and other analyses showing large relative gaps on weapons, violent, property, and drug offenses ^{[5] [6] [7]}. Policy-focused groups and academic summaries—across ideological lines—have repeatedly reported that immigration is not associated with higher crime and that immigrant communities often show equal or lower rates of offending compared with native-born populations ^{[8] [6]}.

3. Nuance by legal status: legal immigrants sit between the two groups

Across the available data, lawful permanent residents and other legal immigrants have arrest and incarceration rates that are generally higher than those of undocumented immigrants but lower than U.S.-born citizens; the Texas evidence places legal immigrants between the other two groups (about 800 per 100,000), a pattern reflected in other analyses reporting intermediate rates for lawfully present populations ^{[1] [3]}. This intermediate position complicates simple narratives that conflate all immigrants or single out undocumented people as uniquely dangerous.

4. Methodological caveats and alternative interpretations

These findings rest primarily on arrest and incarceration records used as proxies for criminal behavior; arrests reflect policing practices, reporting differences, and prosecutorial discretion, not only underlying offending, and the Texas dataset is uniquely informative because it records immigration status at arrest—other jurisdictions lack comparable data, limiting national generalizability ^{[1] [3]}. Scholars and policy analysts caution that structural factors—selection effects (who migrates), fear of deportation, underreporting in marginalized communities, economic vulnerabilities, and differential exposure to law enforcement—can shape observed rates, and that some studies emphasize these complexities while still reporting lower immigrant offending overall ^{[9] [6]}.

5. Implications for public debate and policy

Empirical evidence undermines the claim that undocumented immigration drives higher crime: multiple independent studies and government summaries show lower arrest and incarceration rates among immigrants, particularly the undocumented, than among U.S.-born citizens ^{[2] [1] [6]}. That said, the policy conversation must acknowledge data limits, the role of policing and prosecution, and the social drivers of criminality—addressing crime effectively requires focusing on root causes and law enforcement practices rather than assuming immigration status is a primary risk factor; the research cited here supports that reorientation ^{[9] [8]}.