Criminal Immigrants: Their Numbers, Demographics, and Countries of Origin

by | Mar 15, 2017

Criminal Immigrants: Their Numbers, Demographics, and Countries of Origin

by | Mar 15, 2017

In his first week in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to deport most illegal immigrants who come in contact with law enforcement.1 His order is based on the widespread perception that illegal immigrants are a significant source of crime in the United States.2 This brief uses American Community Survey data to analyze incarcerated immigrants according to their citizenship and legal status. All immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than natives relative to their shares of the population. Even illegal immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans.

Read the Full Immigration Bulletin

Alex Nowrasteh

Alex Nowrasteh is an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. His popular publications have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, the Houston Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, and elsewhere. His academic publications have appeared in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, the Fletcher Security Review, and Public Choice. Alex has appeared on Fox News, Bloomberg, and numerous television and radio stations across the United States. He is the coauthor, with Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, of the booklet Open Immigration: Yea and Nay (Encounter Broadsides, 2014).

He is a native of Southern California and received a BA in economics from George Mason University and a Master of Science in economic history from the London School of Economics.

View all posts

Our Books

Recent Articles

Recent

DOGE’s Demise: A Predictable Post-Mortem

DOGE’s Demise: A Predictable Post-Mortem

As 2025 draws to a close, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—the much-hyped initiative led initially by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy—has quietly disbanded, eight months ahead of its scheduled sunset in July 2026. What began with bold promises of $1-2...

read more
The Praxeology of Conspiracies

The Praxeology of Conspiracies

The starting point of praxeology, i.e., the logic of human action, is a self-evident truth. As economist Ludwig von Mises noted, this truth is “the cognition of the fact that there is such a thing as consciously aiming at ends.” Praxeology describes the invariant...

read more

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This