How do per‑capita crime rates compare between undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and U.S.-born residents nationally and by state?

1. National picture: immigrants commit fewer crimes per capita than the U.S.‑born

Multiple national reviews and long‑run studies conclude immigrants overall have lower incarceration, arrest, and conviction rates than the native‑born population, with some estimates showing immigrants 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.‑born people and consistent findings that immigrants of all legal statuses commit crimes at lower rates ^{[1] [4] [5]}. Independent organizations including Migration Policy Institute and Brennan Center summarize that the weight of the evidence does not support the “migrant crime wave” narrative and often finds immigrants substantially less likely to be jailed or arrested for violent, property, and drug offenses ^{[1] [4]}.

2. Best state‑level evidence: Texas as a case study

The most detailed state analysis uses Texas Department of Public Safety arrest records and finds felony arrest rates near ~1,000 per 100,000 for U.S.‑born citizens, ~800 per 100,000 for legal immigrants, and ~400 per 100,000 for undocumented immigrants—placing undocumented offenders at roughly half the arrest rate of natives and below lawful immigrants ^{[2] [6]}. That Texas study’s results are robust to alternate population estimates, offense classifications, and time periods, and it reports that the proportional share of arrests involving undocumented immigrants was stable or decreasing over the study window ^{[2] [7]}.

3. Substantive offense differences and relative risks

Studies report the gaps vary by offense: in Texas and other analyses, U.S.‑born individuals were over two times more likely than undocumented immigrants to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely for drug crimes, and more than four times more likely for property crimes ^{[7] [2]}. Nationally, research dating back decades finds immigrants are less likely than natives to be incarcerated for weapons, violent, property, and drug offenses, and the gap has persisted or widened in recent years in several analyses ^{[1] [5] [4]}.

4. Why caution is required when generalizing across states

While consistent national and Texas results point to lower per‑capita offending among immigrants, the available literature warns against overgeneralizing to every state because rigorous, directly comparable state‑level measures of undocumented populations and crime are rare; Texas is unusual in having immigration status recorded for arrestees, and many states lack equivalent data infrastructure ^{[2] [3]}. The NIJ‑supported analyses and method papers emphasize sensitivity testing and population‑estimation uncertainty—meaning that while the direction of the finding is robust, precise per‑state numeric comparisons for undocumented populations are often unavailable outside targeted studies ^{[3] [8]}.

5. Competing interpretations, agendas, and gaps in reporting

Advocacy groups and criminal‑justice scholars use these findings to argue that immigration is not driving crime increases and that policies targeting immigrants for public‑safety reasons rest on weak empirical footing, a view echoed by analyses from the American Immigration Council and the Brennan Center ^{[9] [4]}. Conversely, political actors citing isolated incidents or incomplete local data advance a counter‑narrative of migrant‑related crime spikes; scholars caution this conflation can be driven by selective coverage and by the scarcity of state‑level undocumented‑status data outside Texas ^{[9] [5]}. Importantly, reporting gaps remain: nationwide, directly comparable per‑capita crime figures that separate undocumented and legal immigrants by state are still limited, so conclusions beyond jurisdictions with detailed data rest on multiple studies and modeling choices rather than uniform state records ^{[3] [2]}.