A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies shows how the crime rate of illegal immigrants in Texas has been understated in previous analyses. Simply put, not all illegal immigrants are immediately identified as such when they are arrested. Some will be identified only after an investigation during their time in prison; others may never have their status discovered at all if their crimes are not serious enough to merit a lengthy prison stay.
The report concludes that illegal immigrants in Texas seem to have above-average rates of convictions for serious crimes such as homicide and sexual assault, but the failure to reliably identify illegals who commit lesser offenses precludes any strong claims about their overall criminality.
Data issues aside, should we care about the rate of illegal immigrant crime at all? I’m sometimes told that the rate doesn’t matter, since “even one crime committed by an illegal immigrant is one too many.” This point is fine insofar as there are many reasons to oppose illegal immigration, and in an ideal world there would be zero illegal immigrants present in the U.S.
As an argument specifically about the impact of illegal immigrants on public safety, however, the point is less convincing. Imagine Town A has 100 people, two of whom are violent felons. Compare that to Town B, which has 1,000 people, including three violent felons. Clearly Town B is a safer place to live, even though it has more violent felons than Town A, because the rate of crime is lower. The same reasoning applies to immigration. If, contrary to the data discussed above, illegal immigrants actually did have lower crime rates than the general population, then their presence as a whole would not make the average American less safe, even though they would add to the total number of crimes committed.
Of course, “as a whole” is a key part of that statement. To illustrate, some states and localities are “sanctuary jurisdictions” that release arrestees even after ICE identifies them as illegals prioritized for removal. A hypothetically low rate of illegal immigrant crime would still not justify these sanctuary policies, since the subset of illegal immigrants who have already been arrested clearly do have a high crime rate. In fact, a whole suite of programs that help remove criminal aliens — Secure Communities, the Criminal Alien Program, Operation Community Shield, etc. — are designed to enhance public safety regardless of the overall rate of crime among illegals.
So the crime rate is certainly relevant to how illegal immigration impacts the U.S., but that rate should not be used to impugn programs that remove known criminals, nor should it overshadow the various social, economic, and political impacts that transcend crime.