Immigrant crime rate compared to citizens
Executive summary
A broad and growing body of empirical research finds that immigrants—across legal statuses—commit fewer crimes and are incarcerated at lower rates than U.S.-born residents, with several large studies reporting undocumented immigrants arrested or incarcerated at roughly half (or less) the rate of the native-born [1][2]. While isolated high-profile incidents fuel political rhetoric linking immigration to crime, cross‑cutting academic and government analyses show no evidence that higher immigration increases crime rates overall [3][4].
1. What the major studies show: consistently lower offending and incarceration rates
Multiple peer‑reviewed and government‑funded studies find undocumented and other immigrant groups have lower arrest, conviction, and incarceration rates than U.S.-born people; for example, a Texas criminal‑records study found undocumented immigrants arrested at less than half the rate for violent and drug crimes and far lower rates for property crimes [1], and long‑run census analyses show immigrants have had similar or lower incarceration rates than the native‑born since the 19th century, with immigrants 60% less likely to be incarcerated by 2020 in some studies [5][6].
2. Nuance by crime type, time and place: not a single monolith
The pattern of lower offending holds across many offense types in several analyses—assault, sexual assault, robbery, burglary, theft and arson were all lower among undocumented populations in the Texas study [1]—but researchers caution that homicide and other rare offenses fluctuate more and that local correlations between immigration and crime can vary, meaning national averages do not erase regional heterogeneity or temporal changes [7][3].
3. How researchers account for measurement challenges
Researchers use different proxies—arrest rates, conviction rates, incarceration rates—and some studies leverage datasets that include immigration status while others rely on census‑based measures; the National Institute of Justice–funded work used Texas arrest records with status information to separate undocumented from documented immigrants, producing robust comparisons, while long‑run studies use census and incarceration data to trace trends since 1870 [1][8][5]. These methodological differences create variation in magnitudes reported, but not in the overall direction of the evidence showing lower criminality among immigrants [4].
4. Explanations and hypotheses offered by scholars
Sociologists and economists point to selection effects, community cohesion, and immigrant adaptation patterns as potential explanations for lower crime rates among first‑generation immigrants, and some studies even suggest immigration can be associated with declining crime in receiving communities [9][10]. Authors also note the role of structural factors—education, age distribution and law‑enforcement priorities—in shaping observed differences, and warn against attributing short‑term crime fluctuations to immigration without careful analysis [8][3].
5. Political narratives, media cases, and limits of current evidence
Despite the empirical consensus, political actors and some media outlets emphasize individual crimes involving migrants to argue for causal links between immigration and rising crime; analysts caution this is anecdotal reasoning and that data do not support a “migrant crime wave” at the aggregate level [3][11]. At the same time, scholars acknowledge gaps: not every jurisdiction collects immigration status in criminal records systematically, and the full causal mechanisms behind crime trends—especially post‑pandemic shifts—remain complex and under study, so definitive statements about every local context exceed available evidence [3][10].
6. Bottom line and reporting transparency
The best available empirical work—government analyses, peer‑reviewed studies and public‑policy research—converges on one clear finding: immigrants, including undocumented immigrants in multiple studies, are on average less likely to be arrested, convicted or incarcerated than U.S.-born residents [1][2][5]; however, care is required in translating national averages into claims about individual cities or short‑term crime trends, and the record‑keeping and methodological limits noted by researchers should temper overreach in public claims [10][7].