Skip to main content

Trump says migrants are fueling violent crime. Here is what the research shows

“Comparing crime rates between undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and native-born US citizens in Texas, opens new tab” by Michael Light, sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and two other researchers.

The 2020 study was published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.• The report, which used data from the Texas Department of Public Safety between 2012-2018, found a lower felony arrest rate for immigrants in the U.S. illegally compared to legal immigrants and native-born U.S. citizens and no evidence of increasing criminality among immigrants.