WASHINGTON, D.C. — Despite widespread public perception linking immigration to rising crime, immigrants are significantly less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans, according to a recent report by the Cato Institute.
A recent Gallup poll found that 47 percent of Americans believe immigrants increase crime in the United States, while only 5 percent believe immigrants reduce it.
As observed by the Cato Institute, “There’s little doubt that many of the respondents who blamed immigrants for higher crimes are specifically thinking of illegal immigrants.”
However, analysis of the 2024 American Community Survey (ACS) Public Use Microdata Sample from the U.S. Census aligns with previous research showing that immigrants as a whole are less likely to commit offenses and less likely to face incarceration than native-born Americans.
The data analyzed by the Cato Institute indicates that “illegal immigrants are about 44 percent less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans. Legal immigrants are 75 percent less likely to be incarcerated than natives.”
“By themselves, illegal immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans, and legal immigrants are the least likely of all.”
More broadly, “The incarceration rate for native-born Americans was 1,195 per 100,000; 674 per 100,000 for illegal immigrants; and 303 per 100,000 for legal immigrants in 2024.”
The paper follows a series of briefs regarding “nationwide estimates of the incarcerated illegal immigrant population,” first published in 2017, and updates those estimates using the most recent ACS inmate data released in 2024.
Cato scholars used multiple methods to analyze and verify the data, making the analysis “sensitive to the specific ACS variables chosen.”
These methods included identifying undocumented immigrants based on access to welfare benefits and lawful permanent residency, excluding immigrants who entered the United States after 2009.
While “this robustness check shrinks the size of the nonincarcerated illegal immigrant subpopulation relative to those incarcerated and, thus, slightly raises the rate of illegal immigrant incarceration to about 957 per 100,000 and the legal immigrant rate to 390 per 100,000,” researchers maintained that “variable changes did not alter our results enough to undermine confidence in the findings.”
Although ACS inmate data is collected directly from correctional institution administrators or under their supervision, “the quality of the data for the population that includes the incarcerated was not always as reliable.”
The policy analysis identified unreliable or ambiguous data within the ACS and adjusted it using “common statistical methods to identify incarcerated illegal immigrant prisoners by excluding those with characteristics that illegal immigrants are unlikely to have.”
As reported, “The ACS counts the incarcerated population by their nativity and naturalization status, but local and state governments rarely record whether prisoners are illegal immigrants.”
“A limitation of the ACS data is that they include prisoners in correctional facilities and other types of facilities. Although most inmates in the public-use microdata version of the ACS are in correctional facilities, the data also include those in mental health and elderly care institutions and in institutions for people with disabilities,” the brief states.
To address this ambiguity, the analysis focused on individuals ages 18 to 54, excluding those in mental health and retirement facilities.
Few prisoners are under age 18, and many over age 54 reside in elderly-care institutions.
The report states, “We identified 1,742,385 prisoners in the 18–54 age range in adult correctional facilities in 2024, compared to approximately 1,591,028 identified by the ACS in the same year and age ranges.”
Additional research cited in the paper suggests that reducing the immigrant population would have little effect on overall crime rates in the United States.
This would only hold if undocumented immigrants were more likely to commit crimes than native-born individuals; however, the data consistently show the opposite.
“If native-born Americans were incarcerated at the same rate as legal immigrants, then there would be 1.2 million fewer incarcerations,” the paper states.
The data includes undocumented immigrants incarcerated for immigration offenses, including those held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities.
According to the brief, “Those individuals are not detained for violent or property crimes but only for immigration violations.”
“Our research is also consistent with work that finds crime rates either do not increase to a statistically significant extent when states create sanctuary jurisdictions that limit the scope of immigration enforcement,” the paper states.
“The difference in immigrant criminality would have to be extremely large, or their population would have to be a significant share of the local area to affect the local crime rates to the point where their effect would show up.”
While a substantial portion of the American public “believe[s] that immigration increases crime and that illegal immigrants disproportionately contribute to the problem,” the research shows that adding a less crime-prone immigrant population “mechanically reduces the overall incarceration rate in the country.”
The paper supports removing noncitizens convicted of violent or property-related offenses, provided it is proportional to the subpopulation’s crime rate.
“Immigration and Customs Enforcement should be a pickup and delivery service for convicted illegal immigrant criminals, nothing more,” the report states.
The report also points to limitations in data collection on immigrant criminality, noting that incarceration rates alone do not fully capture relative crime rates and may introduce uncertainty.
“There is no excuse for the lack of data on this important public policy issue,” the brief states.
The report concludes, “We recommend that governments at all levels in the United States focus on collecting better data so that we can more precisely understand how illegal immigrants and legal immigrants contribute to crime in the United States.”
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