Immigration Crime Data Shows Conflicting Pictures Across Different Sources

Immigration-related crime has emerged as one of the most contentious issues this year amid the Trump administration’s intensified deportation efforts and stricter border policies. However, the data surrounding immigrant crime presents vastly different narratives depending on which statistics are examined.

The Department of Homeland Security recently sparked political controversy with a press release stating that New York had released nearly 7,000 individuals with active Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers between January and early December 2025. These were cases where ICE had specifically requested the state to hold individuals for federal custody, but New York declined to comply.

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

However, experts note an important distinction: local arrest data doesn’t measure crime rates among immigrants as a whole but rather reflects specific cases that intersected with New York’s criminal justice system during this period.

When examining federal data tracking nationwide noncitizen convictions, a markedly different pattern emerges. Federal statistics primarily capture a narrow range of crimes that become federal offenses, such as illegal entry or reentry, federal drug trafficking, and federal weapons crimes.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Criminal Alien statistics reveal that illegal entry and re-entry remain the most common convictions for noncitizens, typically ranging from 8,000 to 10,000 cases annually. Driving under the influence ranks as the second largest category, while drug and theft convictions number in the hundreds to low thousands each year.

This federal dataset has significant limitations, capturing only federal convictions rather than all crimes potentially committed by immigrants. This disparity helps explain why federal numbers often appear considerably lower than the local data highlighted in DHS press releases.

For a more comprehensive understanding of broader crime trends, the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, analyzed more than a decade of data from the U.S. Census and the American Community Survey. Their 2023 findings on incarceration rates revealed striking contrasts: 1,221 per 100,000 for native-born Americans, 613 per 100,000 for undocumented immigrants, and just 319 per 100,000 for legal immigrants.

The CATO Institute’s research suggests that undocumented immigrants are approximately half as likely to be incarcerated as native-born Americans, while legal immigrants have the lowest incarceration rates of all groups. These trends remained consistent annually from 2010 through 2023, challenging common political narratives about immigrant criminality.

At the state level, only Texas and Georgia comprehensively track immigration status in their arrest, conviction, and incarceration records. The CATO Institute’s analysis of these states revealed patterns similar to their national findings. In Texas, undocumented immigrants had lower conviction and arrest rates than native-born Texans—even for serious offenses like homicide. Georgia’s data showed undocumented immigrants with lower incarceration rates than U.S.-born residents.

The inconsistencies between these various datasets highlight the challenges in forming accurate assessments of immigrant crime in the United States. The CATO Institute has called for improved data collection practices, stating: “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.”

Meanwhile, protests continue in immigration processing centers across the country, including in Broadview, Illinois, where demonstrations have occurred for several weeks in response to the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” which has involved arresting and detaining immigrants throughout the Chicago area.

As immigration policies continue to evolve under the current administration, these conflicting data narratives will likely remain central to public and political debates about the relationship between immigration and public safety.