This claim requires separating two very different populations: legal immigrants and illegal immigrants. The data tells very different stories for each group.

Legal immigrants do indeed have lower crime rates than native-born Americans. This makes sense — they've been screened, background-checked, and self-selected as people motivated enough to navigate the legal immigration process. Nobody disputes this.

But when you look specifically at illegal immigrants, the picture changes. A 2020 study by John Lott, published through the Crime Prevention Research Center and using unique data from the Texas Department of Public Safety (which tracks immigration status), found that illegal immigrants were convicted of homicide at a rate 2.5 times higher than legal residents. They were also overrepresented in drug offenses and certain violent crimes.

The Government Accountability Office found that criminal aliens in federal prisons had an average of seven arrests each. ICE data from 2023 showed there were over 647,000 people with criminal records on the non-detained immigration docket, including individuals with convictions for homicide, sexual assault, and other serious offenses.

Many studies claiming immigrants have low crime rates combine legal and illegal immigrants, which masks the differences. Others compare immigrant crime rates to high-crime urban areas rather than national averages. The methodology matters enormously.

Moreover, any crime committed by an illegal immigrant is a crime that wouldn't have occurred if immigration law had been enforced. The victims — who are often themselves immigrants in border communities — deserve consideration too.

None of this means most illegal immigrants are criminals. Most are people seeking better lives. But pretending there's no public safety dimension to illegal immigration is dishonest and disrespects the victims.