Toward the end of summer, we asked Atlanta Journal-Constitution readers to send us questions about their biggest concerns this election cycle. Dozens of you shared thoughtful queries about various topics. Immigration has been a central topic in this election cycle and has become intertwined with crime statistics.
The killing of Laken Riley on the University of Georgia campus became a new flashpoint in the national debate over illegal immigration. According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jose Ibarra, who has been charged in Riley’s death, and his two brothers entered the U.S. unlawfully after coming from Venezuela.
Former President Donald Trump spoke about the case during the Republican National Convention.
“Yet another American life was stolen by a criminal alien set free by this administration,” he said then.
Credit: Mike Luckovich
Credit: Mike Luckovich
More recently, Trump has made false statements about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, alleging they are “eating the dogs” and “eating the cats.” Trump expanded his rhetoric after the Sept. 10 debate in Philadelphia, claiming Haitian migrants have brought “lawless gangs” and “massive crime” to Charleroi, Pennsylvania. A Haitian nonprofit filed a criminal complaint against Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, over the baseless claims.
These claims are closely linked to dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden’s immigration policies. Throughout Biden’s first term, illegal border crossings frequently made headlines, peaking at 225,000 in December 2023 — an all-time record — before declining in 2024. From 2021 to 2023, Border Patrol agents encountered an average of 2 million migrants annually who entered the country illegally.
Data does not back claims that immigrants are driving a surge in crime in the United States. In fact, crime rates have been steadily declining nationally since 1986 and have also decreased in Georgia over the past decade.
What is the crime rate among migrants compared to the crime rate among U.S. citizens here in the U.S.? — From Barbara
Research indicates that immigrants, both legal and undocumented, do not commit crimes or face incarceration at higher rates than native-born Americans. However, as of 2023, Gallup polls showed nearly half of Americans believe immigrants make crime worse.
A 2023 study conducted by several academics in partnership with the National Bureau of Economic Research analyzed incarceration rates for immigrants and U.S.-born individuals from 1870 to 2020. The study concluded that “immigrants have had lower incarceration rates than the US-born for 150 years.” Additionally, it found that “immigrants today are 60% less likely to be incarcerated (30% relative to US-born whites),” and the decline happened among immigrants in all regions.
A 2015 study led by sociologist Robert Adelman at the State University of New York at Buffalo examined the relationship between immigration rates and crime rates in 200 metropolitan areas from 1970 to 2010. The findings revealed that most areas have significantly higher immigrant populations today compared to 1980, along with a decrease in violent crime. The Marshall Project extended the study’s data to 2016, demonstrating that crime rates generally declined more often than they increased, even as immigrant populations continued to grow.
At this point you might be wondering if illegal immigrants are responsible for crime.
Gathering data on undocumented immigrants is challenging, as they have been the subjects of few studies. However, according to the FBI, crime rates have steadily declined from 1986 to 2024, even as immigration has increased. Research by The Marshall Project found no connection between undocumented immigrants and an increase in violent or property crime between 2007 and 2016.
In a study out of Texas, the only state that records criminal convictions and arrests by immigration status, researchers with the CATO Institute found “from 2012 through the end of 2018, illegal immigrants in Texas had an average criminal conviction rate 42% below that of native-born Americans” in the state. Additionally, the study revealed legal immigrants had a criminal conviction rate 63% lower than that of native-born Americans during the same years.
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