By Ted Hesson and Mica Rosenberg
(Reuters) – Donald Trump is accusing migrants illegally in the United States of fueling violent crime as part of his campaign to win back the White House, repeating rhetoric used during his previous run for president. But studies show that immigrants are not more likely to engage in crime.
WHAT DOES TRUMP SAY ABOUT IMMIGRANTS AND CRIME?
Former US President Donald Trump, a Republican who challenged President Joe Biden in November’s election, focused on crimes committed by immigrants in the US illegally as part of his argument for tougher border controls.
Trump says Biden’s policies are overly permissive and has branded crimes committed by immigrants in the country illegally as “Biden migrant crime.”
Trump has used dehumanizing terminology to describe illegal immigrants in the United States, calling them “animals” when talking about alleged criminal acts and saying they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” a phrase that has drawn criticism as xenophobic and echoed to Nazi rhetoric. .
Recently, Trump and Republicans have focused on the case of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student from Georgia allegedly killed illegally by a Venezuelan in the country.
The Republican National Committee earlier this month launched a website called “Biden Bloodbath” that highlights anecdotal incidents involving migrants in eight U.S. states, including electoral battlegrounds such as Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
HOW DID BIDEN RESPOND?
Biden was interrupted during his State of the Union address in March by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican who called on Biden to acknowledge the killing.
Biden responded by saying that Riley was “an innocent woman killed by an illegal immigrant.” She then asked how many people have been killed by “legals,” apparently referring to citizens and other people in the country legally.
Biden later said he regretted calling Riley’s accused killer “illegal” and said the term should have been “undocumented.”
Biden’s top border official, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, said in a roundtable with reporters last week that he “deeply” disagrees with efforts “to demonize all migrants based on the actions of an individual”.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said earlier this month that violent rhetoric was being used “to tear our country apart.”
DO IMMIGRANTS COMMIT MORE CRIMES THAN NATIVE BORNS?
A series of studies by academics and think tanks have shown that immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans.
A more limited universe of studies specifically examines crime among illegal immigrants in the United States, but also finds that they do not commit crimes at a higher rate.
A selection of recent research:
“Immigration and Crime: Evaluating a Controversial Issue,” by Charis Kubrin, professor of criminology at the University of California, Irvine, and Graham Ousey, professor of sociology at William & Mary. The 2018 study was published in the annual peer-reviewed journal of criminology. * A meta-analysis of more than fifty studies on the link between immigration and crime between 1994 and 2014 found that there was no significant relationship between the two. * Researchers subsequently studied all aspects of the question in a book published last year that came to similar findings.
“Law-abiding immigrants: The immigrant-born incarceration gap in the United States, 1870-2020,” by Ran Abramitzky, an economics professor at Stanford University, and four other researchers. The 2024 working paper was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. * The study, which used U.S. census data, found that immigrants had lower incarceration rates than the U.S.-born over a 150-year period.
“Comparison of crime rates among undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and native-born U.S. citizens in Texas,” by Michael Light, professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and two other researchers. The 2020 study was published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. * The report, which used Texas Department of Public Safety data between 2012 and 2018, found a lower felony arrest rate for illegal immigrants in the U.S. compared to legal immigrants and native-born U.S. citizens and no evidence of increased crime among immigrants. * Light published a study in 2017 that found illegal immigration does not increase violent crime. The study used data from all 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., from 1990 to 2014. A separate study found no link between increased illegal immigration and drunk driving deaths .
Cato Institute research by Alex Nowrasteh and others * The libertarian think tank has released numerous reports showing that immigrants in the country commit crimes at lower rates than natives. In a recent USA Today editorial, Nowrasteh previewed new research that found that illegal U.S. immigrants in Texas were about 26 percent less likely to be convicted of murder than native-born Americans in 2013- 2022.
HOW RELIABLE IS THE DATA?
Many of the studies mentioned above were conducted by academic researchers and published in peer-reviewed journals.
The studies are based on a variety of data sources, including U.S. census data and estimates of the number of illegal immigrants in the United States.
Several reports examining immigrant crime rates in the United States illegally use data from the Texas Department of Public Safety, which records immigration status in its arrest records.
Michael Light, one of the researchers who used the Texas data, said that crime rates would likely vary from state to state, but that the Texas data was the best available.
Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute said researchers would have a better idea of the country’s illegal immigrant crime rate if other states kept and shared data the same way Texas does.
DO ANY STUDIES REVEAL THE IMMIGRANTS MOST LIKELY TO COMMIT CRIMES?
The Center for Immigration Studies, a research group that advocates for lower levels of immigration, has argued that researchers using Texas Department of Public Safety data have underreported crimes by illegal immigrants in the country.
The group said in 2022 that both Michael Light and Nowrasteh failed to account for immigrants who were identified as illegal in the country after being imprisoned. Nowrasteh disputed the CIS’s criticism and said the group illegally double-counted some criminals in the country.
In its own 2009 study, the CIS found that “there is no clear evidence that immigrants commit crimes at higher or lower rates than others.”
A 2018 study using Arizona state prison records from 1985 to 2017 found that illegal immigrants in the country were more likely to be convicted of a crime. The study, conducted by conservative economist John Lott, found that illegal immigrants in the United States tend to commit more serious crimes and serve longer sentences. But Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute criticized the findings, saying Lott had included immigrants who had legal status in the United States and may have violated the terms of their visa by committing a crime.
IS IT POSSIBLE THAT TRENDS HAVE CHANGED RECENTLY?
The data used to determine crime rates is typically several years old, so it doesn’t explicitly talk about current or future trends.
However, some studies have found consistent patterns over long periods of time.
Several researchers have said that over the past decade, more families and unaccompanied minors have been caught crossing the border, groups that are statistically less likely to commit crimes.
Michael Light, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said U.S. research overall does not indicate that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes.
“Of course people born abroad have committed crimes,” Light said in an interview. “But do foreign-born individuals commit crimes at a disproportionately higher rate than domestic-born individuals? The answer is emphatically no.”