Are Undocumented Immigrants More Likely to Commit Crimes Than U.S. Citizens?

Immigration Crime Data Shows Conflicting Trends as Enforcement Intensifies

Immigration-related crime has emerged as one of this year’s most contentious political issues, with the Trump administration accelerating deportations and strengthening border security measures. However, analyzing the actual data on migrant-related crime reveals dramatically different conclusions depending on which statistics are examined.

A recent Department of Homeland Security press release ignited controversy when it reported that New York had released nearly 7,000 individuals with active Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers between January and early December 2025. Despite ICE’s specific requests to hold these individuals for federal custody, New York authorities declined to honor these detainer requests.

According to DHS figures, those individuals had been charged with or convicted of 29 homicides, 2,509 assaults, 300 weapons offenses, and 207 sexual predatory offenses. These statistics come directly from local and state arrest or conviction records, which DHS uses to identify individuals for detainers.

However, experts caution that local arrest data doesn’t provide a complete picture of overall immigrant crime rates. It only reflects cases that intersected with New York’s criminal justice system during that period, potentially creating a skewed perception of immigrant criminality.

When examining federal conviction data tracked nationwide, a markedly different pattern emerges. Federal statistics primarily capture a narrow range of offenses, including illegal entry/reentry, federal drug trafficking, and federal weapons crimes.

Department of Homeland Security’s Criminal Alien statistics show illegal entry and re-entry remain the most common convictions for noncitizens, typically reaching 8,000 to 10,000 cases annually. DUIs constitute the second-largest category, while drug and theft convictions number in the hundreds to low thousands each year. This federal dataset only includes federal convictions, not state-level crimes, which explains why federal figures often appear significantly lower than local data highlighted in DHS press releases.

For a broader perspective on crime trends, the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, analyzed over a decade of data from the U.S. Census and American Community Survey. Their 2023 incarceration rate findings present a striking contrast to political rhetoric: native-born Americans were incarcerated at a rate of 1,221 per 100,000 population, while illegal immigrants showed a rate of 613 per 100,000, and legal immigrants just 319 per 100,000.

CATO’s analysis indicates illegal immigrants are approximately half as likely to be incarcerated as native-born Americans, with legal immigrants showing the lowest incarceration rates of all groups. These trends remained consistent annually from 2010 through 2023, challenging common political narratives about immigrant criminality.

State-level data from Texas and Georgia—the only two states that systematically track immigration status in their criminal justice records—reinforces these findings. In Texas, illegal immigrants had lower conviction and arrest rates than native-born Texans, even for serious crimes like homicide. Georgia’s data similarly showed lower incarceration rates for illegal immigrants compared to U.S.-born residents.

The CATO Institute has urged federal and state governments to collect more comprehensive data on immigration status in relation to criminal justice outcomes. In their recommendation, they noted: “The states and federal government should collect better incarceration, conviction, and arrest data by immigration status so that the public and policymakers can more accurately understand how immigrants affect crime in the United States.”

This data discrepancy highlights the complexity of the immigration and crime debate, where political messaging often diverges significantly from available statistical evidence. As immigration remains a central political issue, the gap between public perception and empirical data continues to influence policy decisions and public discourse on border security and immigration enforcement.