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Trump has claimed numerous times that part of the reason we need to close the border is that the illegal immigrants are prone to crimes. I want to check these claims. Are illegal immigrants more prone to committing crimes then the average US citizen?

Obviously being an illegal immigrant is a crime itself, but for this question I want to ignore any crimes that are due to their illegal status, such as not paying taxes. I'm more interested in serious crimes, felonies and violent crimes. I'm also interested in rape as the most common accusation made by Trump. Ideally I'd prefer an answer that separately answers the question of whether illegal immigrants are more prone to rape in addition to whether they are more prone to non-rape crimes if possible.

This question refers specifically to illegal immigrants to the United States. I'll accept statistics that look at all illegal immigrants, or that look only at Hispanic illegal immigrants, since Trump often refers to Hispanic illegal Immigrants as if they are the sole form of illegal immigrant.

Andrew Grimm
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dsollen
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    It would help to have a specific claim (whether from Trump or not). – Oddthinking Oct 23 '16 at 14:06
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    Related question: [Other countries](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15948/is-the-immigrant-crime-correlation-simply-explained-by-lower-wealth). Also, [a similar poorly worded question](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/35137/do-immigrants-to-the-us-commit-less-crimes-that-native-born-americans) was asked before, and it eventually was edited to be very similar to this question, but no consensus was reached on the wording, so it was never re-opened. – Oddthinking Oct 23 '16 at 14:08
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    The exact claim would be important. It's possible for illegals to commit fewer crimes on average per capita but still account for a disproportionate share of the total criminal activity if the population is quite polarized. For example, a large proportion may be keeping their heads down and avoiding risks, while another portion of the group just doesn't care. In which case, either side could quote valid statistics that would appear to support their agenda. – Spehro Pefhany Oct 24 '16 at 11:08
  • You state that Trump said they are "prone" to crimes, but then you ask if they are actually "more prone" to crimes. It seems to me there is a difference. – James Oct 24 '16 at 11:35
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    There is no real way to tell without looking at a very specific claim. Are we looking at reported crimes, or crimes that are suspected? Are we looking at enditements or convictions, maybe arrests? What about other "paperwork" crimes like false documents? Where is the line on those. Many are civil issues and not "crimes", but tax issues are crimes (sometimes). In order to really look at the claim, it would need to be very specific. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/07/16/voices-gomez-undocumented-immigrant-crime-san-francisco-shooting/30159479/ is a good read. – coteyr Oct 24 '16 at 17:45
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    Additionally, are we comparing crime rates of illegal immigrants to the overall crime rate (this seems to be assumed by existing answers), or illegal immigrant crime rate compared to legal immigrant crime rate? Seems logical that illegals would be more likely than legals to commit crimes, if for no other reason than that violent criminals are less likely to be able to immigrate legally. – thelr Oct 24 '16 at 20:12
  • @their crime right of illegals vs total crime rate. I feel that's more in keeping with Trumps claims and logic. He is basically saying more illegals mean more crime, if it turned out that, say, illegal immigrants were more prone to crime then legal immigrants but still less prone to crime then the national average that would still not lead to less safe US as in trumps statements, since the odds of a person you meet committing a crime against you has still gone down. – dsollen Oct 24 '16 at 20:26
  • The comments are straying from the topic of improving the question. Other discussions about immigration are welcome in chat. – Oddthinking Oct 27 '16 at 14:39
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    You state that you want to "ignore any crimes that are due to their illegal status, such as not paying taxes," but it may help you narrow the focus of your question to know that in fact illegal immigrants pay millions of dollars of taxes in each state annually, and that this is counter to Trump's claims as well. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-01/study-undocumented-immigrants-pay-billions-in-taxes – Danica Stone Oct 27 '16 at 18:16
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    "Obviously being an illegal immigrant is a crime itself" -- Being an illegal immigrant is **not** a crime in the US. Being "out of status" makes you liable for deportation, but you are not subject to a punishment, like jail or a fine. – Michael Lorton Oct 28 '16 at 02:47
  • It also depends on the type of crime. For example, Muslims are 25 times more likely to commit acts of terrorism in the United States (50% of all domestic terrorists acts in 2016 according to the NYT), the vast majority of which are either 1st or 2nd generation immigrants. –  Oct 28 '16 at 14:33
  • @KDog I'm extremely skeptical of that claim. Can you provide a link to a study backing that up? – dsollen Oct 28 '16 at 15:58
  • @dsollen Knock yourself out http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/12/nyt_shows_that_muslims_are_25_times_more_likely_to_commit_terrorist_attacks.html –  Oct 28 '16 at 16:48
  • @KDog That is not a study. It's a partician paper which I wasn't able to track back to it's original statistics, but at the very least appears to confuse deaths caused by attacks with number of attackers. I've asked a separate question on the validity of the claims: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/35677/are-muslums-25-times-more-likely-to-commit-terrorist-attacks – dsollen Oct 28 '16 at 17:18
  • It depends whether the illegal immigrant is a terrorist. ;) – I.Am.A.Guy Oct 29 '16 at 16:20

3 Answers3

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TL;DR: We don't know. Reported crimes are actually lower, but that may not reflect the real crime rate. There is no evidence that it is higher, only speculation.

Immigrant crime statistics show less crime

There have been quite a few studies on this. One review found

With few exceptions, immigrants are less crime prone than natives or have no effect on crime rates. As described below, the research is fairly one-sided.

There are some issues with the studies. For example, one type of analysis compares incarceration rates. But this isn't a good basis for comparison. The courts have an additional option with illegal immigrants that they do not have with citizens. The courts can deport illegal immigrants--even if not found guilty of a crime. So those people are never incarcerated and wouldn't show up in those statistics.

Illegal immigrants are less likely to report crimes

ThinkProgress reports

A new study released reveals that Latinos are less likely to report crimes to the police because they are afraid of being asked of their immigration status.

Why would this affect crime statistics regarding crimes committed by illegal immigrants? Because people mostly commit crimes against others like themselves. For example, the FBI's Expanded Homicide Data Table 6 shows that each grouping (white, black, Hispanic, etc.) is most likely to commit crimes against its own group. It's unclear how much this reporting discrepancy causes statistics to undercount crimes by illegal immigrants, but this would have a disproportionate impact on illegal immigrants relative to the native born. As a proxy, Hispanics report Hispanic offenders more than three times as often as non-Hispanic offenders: 439 to 123 in the statistics.

We don't have a good study of how much crime is not reported. Like with rape statistics, it is difficult to accurately estimate what is not reported. We can only point out that underreporting has a disproportionate impact on illegal immigrant statistics relative to citizen statistics.

Sklivvz
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Brythan
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    I've removed your personal speculation. Please limit your answer to what the evidence shows and to answering the question. – Sklivvz Oct 24 '16 at 08:42
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    The claim is "Trump has claimed numerous times that part of the reason we need to close the border is that the illegal immigrants are prone to crimes." The part you call "personal speculation" is directly responsive to that--which is the actual claim of the poster's question and is in fact what most people want to know. Another way of saying the same thing: if we increase border enforcement, would it decrease crime? Since that is the actual policy under consideration. The answer is that we don't know what would happen in that case. There is some reason to believe that it would. – Brythan Oct 24 '16 at 14:08
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    @Brythan while I agree with its content, the third of your answer I removed had no supporting evidence, nor it was based on the evidence presented in the rest of the answer. It read as your personal speculation on the larger Trump claim, which is not what the question specifically asks. – Sklivvz Oct 24 '16 at 14:35
  • @Sklivvz: What if that were reformulated in parallel construction to the either points? (e.g. "Foreign nationals caught committing crimes cross the border more often than those who haven't been deported") – Ben Voigt Oct 24 '16 at 18:03
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    Thanks for pointing out crime is underreported in immigrant communities; legal, illegal or otherwise. – Giacomo1968 Oct 25 '16 at 01:32
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    @Sklivvz - editing doesn't serve for you to effectively rewrite someone else's answer to what your answer would be. If you think that more than 30% of this answer is crap, downvote, write your own, and move along. This is ridiculous. – Davor Oct 25 '16 at 19:27
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    @Davor, whilst I value your opinion, unreferenced answers on this site are routinely deleted by moderators, even when highly upvoted. The edit is an alternative to such a deletion. – Sklivvz Oct 25 '16 at 21:24
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    For people who can't see deleted part it's available [here](http://pastebin.com/jquD8STx). – Daerdemandt Oct 25 '16 at 21:59
  • @Davor: Despite the fact that many questions offer up statistics in ways which are factual but misleading, and in many cases the most logical answer would be that the statistic--accurate or not--does not actually imply what the original question would suggest, the moderators of the site seem hostile toward answers which would address the validity of the question's implications. – supercat Oct 26 '16 at 21:29
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    @Daerdemandt: No need for pastebin or wikileaks, it's right there in the edit history. Your link made me think that the removed part wasn't just edited out but actually _purged_. – Zano Oct 27 '16 at 08:25
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    @Zano 1) many people can't do most trivial things on this site because of low or inexistent karma. Keeping track what they *can* do is cumbersome. 2) unregistered people, even if they can see [review history](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/posts/35600/revisions), may not know that they can - or how to do it. 3) It is not purged now, it may well be purged later. While link to backup in comments does little against that, it does something, and costs no effort. Saving and reposting these things is a rule of thumb for times where rules seem to be applied creatively. – Daerdemandt Oct 27 '16 at 09:40
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    @supercat - I don't have a problem with that. I just think that it's ridiculous to use edit function to thoroughly change someone's answer. At that point, you should be writing your own. – Davor Oct 27 '16 at 11:27
  • @Davor: I do have a problem with that philosophy. If someone asks "Was it possible in 1973 one could buy a truckload of X for the price of a Y", the answer would only really be no if there was no place during 1973 where a truckload of X was tendered for sale at a price less than that of the most expensive Y, and that would most likely be unprovable. The implied relationship between the *typical* prices of X and Y in 1973 may be disprovable, but it's entirely possible that the statement originated because of a truckload of X which was sold at an unusually-low price. If... – supercat Oct 27 '16 at 15:18
  • ...nobody can find any record of such a sale having taken place, but circumstances existed that would have made such a sale somewhat plausible, how should the question be answered? Any answer to the actual question being asked would be speculation, but information about the implied question could be answered with information about typical prices of X and Y. – supercat Oct 27 '16 at 15:20
  • @Brythan do you have an estimate of what percentage of illegal immigrants commit (but are not charged with) felony failure to register with the Selective Service? "If you are an immigrant man (documented or undocumented) living in the United States, age 18 through 25, you are required to register." https://www.sss.gov/Registration/Immigrants-and-Dual-Nationals "Failing to register or comply with the Military Selective Service Act is a felony punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 or a prison term of up to five years" or both. https://www.sss.gov/Registration/Why-Register/Benefits-and-Penalties – DavePhD Nov 15 '16 at 13:54
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No.

Numerous studies show that immigrants (legal and undocumented) are actually less likely to commit violent crime.

From The Wall Street Journal piece "The Mythical Connection Between Immigrants and Crime":

Numerous studies going back more than a century have shown that immigrants—regardless of nationality or legal status—are less likely than the native population to commit violent crimes or to be incarcerated.

A report by the American Immigration Council, published in 2015:

For more than a century, innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime.

and

A variety of different studies using different methodologies have found that immigrants are less likely than the native-born to engage in either violent or nonviolent “antisocial” behaviors; that immigrants are less likely than the native-born to be repeat offenders among “high risk” adolescents; and that immigrant youth who were students in U.S. middle and high schools in the mid-1990s and are now young adults have among the lowest delinquency rates of all young people.

and

Despite the abundance of evidence that immigration is not linked to higher crime rates, and that immigrants are less likely to be criminals than the native-born, many U.S. policymakers succumb to their fears and prejudices about what they imagine immigrants to be.

This 2015 Washington Post piece (scroll down through the article) runs up a list of sources that support the claim that there legal and illegal immigrants are less likely to commit violent crime.

rougon
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    IMO this answer could be improved by including the actual numbers and hard statistics these statements are based on. Or at least some notable examples of numbers. – Fiksdal Oct 23 '16 at 20:47
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    At least some of your quotes are about immigrants as a whole, not illegal ones. – Andrew Grimm Oct 23 '16 at 21:49
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    @AndrewGrimm if you're referring to my answer, several of the sources note that it is nearly impossible to completely distinguish between the two, i.e. http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/does_immigration_increase_crime – rougon Oct 23 '16 at 22:00
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    In your answer you told **Numerous studies** but provided nothing to back it up. All you have is some NY times article, and report that tells that *innumerable studies have confirmed*. – Salvador Dali Oct 24 '16 at 06:04
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    Please avoid personal attacks, opinions and discussion on whether this answer is true. Use comments appropriately. – Sklivvz Oct 24 '16 at 08:36
  • Second warning. Use the [chat] for personal speculation. – Sklivvz Oct 24 '16 at 12:49
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    The question is about statistics, this answer cites no statistics. – Fiksdal Oct 24 '16 at 15:26
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    @SalvadorDali Exactly. Can you imagine if someone posted an answer here, but the source of such loose statements were Breitbart or Fox News? They would have (quite rightly) been downvoted and asked to provide hard numbers and statistics. Why should we hold the WSJ to a different standard? We know FN and BB are ideologically biased and dishonest, but are we just going to give the WSJ carte blanche? This is inappropriate for a skeptics site. This answer desperately needs hard statistics, and in the absence of that, it's very low quality as per the [help], IMO. – Fiksdal Oct 24 '16 at 15:27
  • @Fiksdal, you are right, the WSJ journal is definitely biased--it's a conservative paper. If you look at the sources, they discuss the difficulty in looking at national crime statistics. Or how about: there are 0 legitimate places that provide statistics that undocumented immigrants commit more crime. – rougon Oct 24 '16 at 15:37
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    Rougon: I don't care what political affiliation the WSJ purports to have. I don't care **who** says what. This is Skeptics and for a question about statistics we need answers that cite hard statistics. I don't know why this is upvoted so highly. You're saying that there **are** no credible statistics on this. (I think I agree, BTW.) If that's the case, then how exactly did the WSJ come to their conclusions? Do you know? Or did you just take the WSJ at their word? Because that would be the opposite of skepticism, and completely contrary to the [help]. CC: @SalvadorDali – Fiksdal Oct 24 '16 at 15:44
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    @Fiksdal Your comment seems to charge the WSJ with bias. If you reread the question, it only mentions statistics at the end. Also, if you look at the studies mentioned, stats are discussed, albeit more in passing than you would like. They may not have smoking gun stats, but the various studies and reports seem to show that there is a clear trend. Now, you are more a math person than me, but it still looks like pretty solid evidence, certainly enough to make it appropriate for the site. – rougon Oct 24 '16 at 15:48
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    @rougon It's human nature to be biased. I'm charging **all** of us with bias. I know nearly nothing about the WSJ. And I haven't read the whole article you link to either. If the article cites hard statistics, then you need to include those in the answer itself. Yes, the question asks for statistics in the title itself by the word "likely". Probability is **only** assessed by hard numbers. When I Googled this, I found a Fox News article saying the opposite. But I didn't find the statistics convincing enough to be included in an answer. **You** don't even mention a single number in your answer. – Fiksdal Oct 24 '16 at 15:55
  • @Fiksdal Fair enough. I think we have different expectations about sources, evidence, and what the answer calls for. – rougon Oct 24 '16 at 15:57
  • @rougon Clearly we do, if taking someone's word for how likely something is is your idea of skepticism. – Fiksdal Oct 24 '16 at 15:59
  • @fiksdal I don't think I'd characterize my answer as blind trust in someone's word, but I respect and appreciate your commitment to quality statistics. – rougon Oct 24 '16 at 16:02
  • rougon: Yeah, our discussion is at an end. Thanks, it's been productive :) I've [posted about it](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/3729/31721) at Meta to get the views of the community. CC: @SalvadorDali – Fiksdal Oct 24 '16 at 16:36
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    Doesn't the question title ask about _illegal_ immigrants? You went and covered _legal_. – 8protons Oct 24 '16 at 17:42
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    @8protons I've addressed this several times in the comments. There are no studies that single out undocumented immigrants. Several of the studies (I link to one above) discuss this directly. – rougon Oct 24 '16 at 17:56
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    The Washington Post source has a paragraph discrediting the possibility illegal vs legal immigrants makes a significant different: *"Since undocumented immigrants are more than a quarter of the immigrant population, it's nearly impossible that the overall-immigrant crime rate could be so much lower if the undocumented-immigrant crime rate were significantly higher."* Maybe this should be added to the answer? – Batman Oct 24 '16 at 23:29
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    @rougon How can you make *any* assertion about an answer without studies that single out illegal immigrants? Your comment effectively amounts to a direct admission of having no data applicable to the question. – jpmc26 Oct 25 '16 at 00:26
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    Much as I'd like to be able to agree with this answer, it would be an admission of my own confirmation bias. The evidence presented in this answer simply does not support the conclusion of "yes"; at best, it supports the "we don't know" conclusion presented in [the other highly-voted answer](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/35600/3451). The difficulty distinguishing between legal and illegal immigrants does not excuse lumping them all together for purposes of answering the question. – Beofett Oct 25 '16 at 16:32
  • The _Wall Street Journal_ is a very high quality source on its _news_ pages, but its _opinion_ pages are strongly biased toward Republican talking points, much like Fox News. The cited article, in light of current Republican talking points, appears to be an exception, but it's a 2015 article, and at that point a majority of the Republican party opposed Donald Trump (although a plurality supported him), so at the time it was consistent with the Republican agenda. But when evaluating an article from an editorial, it's reasonable to examine the arguments backing the opinions. – Steve Oct 30 '16 at 17:34
  • @Questor Until you think about it for a second and realize that being an undocumented immigrant doesn't necessitate having crossed the border illegally (in fact, most don't). Even if they had it may only be a misdemeanor, if guilt could be proven. – Batman Mar 22 '23 at 21:59
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One way to know if illegal immigrants commit more crimes would be to examine the number or people who report being victimized and see if it's higher in places where illegal immigrants are more likely to live. Or in other words, to examine whether sanctuary city policies increase the crime rate.

Researchers Daniel Martinez of U of Arizona, Ricardo Martinez-Schuldt of UNC Chapel Hill, and Guillermo Cantor of the American Immigration Council, published their summary of the current science on sanctuary cities (what they call "limited cooperation policies") and crime, which is surprisingly limited: only four studies were available as of November 2017.

The studies that were conducted contradict the scary narratives about violent cop-killing criminals and illegal immigration. The researchers write:

For the most part, it appears that jurisdictions with limited cooperation policies are either safer from crime or no different than jurisdictions without such policies (Wong, 2017; Gonzalez et al., 2017). Furthermore, limited cooperation policies may indirectly reduce crime by magnifying the crime‐reducing effects of immigration (Martínez‐Schuldt & Martínez, n.d.; Lyons et al., 2013; Ousey & Kubrin, 2017).

How can this be? They suggest that "limited cooperation policies" actually improve communication between the folks who live in the US but are undocumented and the local police force and sheriffs, an effect they call a "spiral of trust", which "strengthens formal and informal social control through community organization, thus reducing crime."

The researchers acknowledge that there is a need for better knowledge of the victims who may not report crimes. But not knowing this is no support for the political narrative that illegal immigrants make America unsafe: a citizen concerned about his or her own safety will not be affected.

elliot svensson
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