"Most Americans equate illegal aliens with a higher incidence of crime... in fact, data show that the American public understands the facts better than the academics. Adult illegal aliens represented 3.1 percent of the total adult population of the country in 2003. By comparison, the illegal alien prison population represented a bit more than 4.54 percent of the overall prison population. Therefore, deportable criminal aliens were more than half again as likely to be incarcerated as their share of the population.

Their presence in the United States is based on their either illegally entering the country or entering under false pretenses. Those who sneak into the country undergo no form of screening for criminality or any other grounds for exclusion... illegal aliens... end up being co-opted into criminal activity..."

Mar. 2007 - Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) 

"After conducting a 12 month in-depth study of illegal immigrants who committed sex crimes and murders for the time period of January 1999 through April 2006 , it is clear that the U.S. public faces a dangerous threat from sex predators who cross the U.S. borders illegally... Offenders were located in 36 states, but it is clear, that the most of the offenders were located in states with the highest numbers of illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigrants who commit sex crimes first cross the U.S. border illegally... There is a clear pattern of criminal escalation. From misdemeanors such as assault or DUI, to drug offenses, illegal immigrants who commit sex crimes break U.S. laws repeatedly... Their attacks are particularly brutal, and they use a hands-on method of controlling and/or killing their victims."

2006 - Deborah Schurman-Kauflin, PhD 

"Complex problems are associated with illegal aliens who commit crimes... aliens do not confine their criminal activities to border cities. Communities throughout this country are experiencing increasing alien involvement in drug importation and distribution, weapons smuggling, and violence against persons and property. The escalation in alien crime has placed added demands on state and local law enforcement personnel.

In the [2005 U.S. Justice Department] population study of 55,322 illegal aliens, researchers found that they were arrested at least a total of 459,614 times, averaging about 8 arrests per illegal alien."

Aug. 4, 2005 - Jim Kouri, MA 

"Defendants charged with unlawful reentry had the most extensive criminal histories. 90% had been previously arrested. Of those with a prior arrest, 50% had been arrested for violent or drug-related felonies. All of these crimes would have never happened, i.e. they were preventable, has [sic] we had a serious program of deportation of the illegal aliens already here and proper border security to prevent both entry and re-entry... To get the full extent of the collateral damage, we need to apply the average number of offenses across all 267,000 currently incarcerated illegal alien criminals. Doing so results in 1,288,619 crimes!

Don't let the mainstream media and illegal alien advocates tell you that illegal immigration is a 'victimless crime' and that they are here only to do the work Americans don't want to do. Since each crime has a victim, 1,288,619 sounds like a lot of victimization to us. Also keep in mind that the 1,288,619 crimes are only the ones committed by the hard core illegal alien criminals who were finally caught and incarcerated. The ones not caught and the new criminals crossing daily are committing more crime each and every day."

Feb. 16, 2007 - Family Security Matters (FSM) 

"[...] The criminality of the first generation of immigrants (those who migrated as opposed to their children) is less than that of the native-born. There have been many studies in the United States and abroad that have addressed the question of the criminality of immigrants

[...] there is little reason to believe that the findings would be substantially different for illegal immigrants assuming data were available that would allow us to make the necessary statistical controls for age, sex, economic status and immigrant status. Public fears about immigrant criminality have usually not been born out by research."

July 12, 2006 - William F. McDonald, PhD 

"If I had to estimate from my own experiences with more than a thousand clients in New Hampshire, I'd guess that illegal immigrants commit all other offenses, particularly criminal offenses, at a rate lower than white citizens do, at least in New Hampshire; moreover, they are marginally more likely than my white clients to be employed."

Apr. 10, 2006 - Seth Abramson, JD 

"Because many immigrants to the United States, especially Mexicans and Central Americans, are young men who arrive with very low levels of formal education, popular stereotypes tend to associate them with higher rates of crime and incarceration. The fact that many of these immigrants enter the country through unauthorized channels or overstay their visas often is framed as an assault against the 'rule of law,' thereby reinforcing the impression that immigration and criminality are linked. This association has flourished in a post-9/11 climate of fear and ignorance where terrorism and undocumented immigration often are mentioned in the same breath.

However, data from the census and other sources show that for every ethnic group without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants, even those who are the least educated. This holds true especially for the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans who make up the bulk of the undocumented population. The problem of crime in the United States is not 'caused' or even aggravated by immigrants, regardless of their legal status. But the misperception that the opposite is true persists among policymakers, the media, and the general public, thereby undermining the development of reasoned public responses to both crime and immigration."

Spring 2007 - Ruben G. Rumbaut, PhD 
Walter A. Ewing, PhD 
"The Myth of Immigrant Criminality and the Paradox of Assimilation: Incarceration Rates among Native and Foreign-Born Men" (897 KB)  

"Our sociological knowledge of crime is fragmented and ineffective in challenging and correcting mistaken public perceptions, for example, linking immigration and crime. These misperceptions are perpetuated by government reports of growing numbers of Hispanic immigrants in U.S. prisons...

[I]t is estimated that the involvement of Hispanic immigrants in crime is less than that of citizens. These results cast doubt on the hypothesis that immigration causes crime and make more transparent the immigration and criminal justice policies that inflate the rate of Hispanic incarceration."

Nov. 1999 - John Hagan, PhD 
Alberto Palloni, PhD