David J. Bier
Many people believe that immigrants increase crime, and they are extremely reluctant to accept the mountains of evidence that prove otherwise. In my latest policy analysis for the Cato Institute, coauthored with data analyst Julian Salazar, we investigate the question of immigrant crime from a different angle: the perspective of the victims of crime.
Cato has previously published a series of studies showing that immigrants and noncitizens are less likely to be incarcerated and convicted of serious crimes. Skeptics still doubt the reliability of data, whether surveys of prisons or arrest records from states and localities. However, the National Crime Victimization Survey avoids the problems of gathering data directly from criminals.
We first show that victims and perpetrators share similar demographic characteristics across a broad range of violent crime. Therefore, if immigrants were committing more crimes, it would likely result in a higher rate of victimization, particularly by family members and people they know or had seen before the crime, who are likely to be immigrants.
We find the opposite: immigrants overall are 44 percent less likely to be victims of violent offenses in the United States than the US-born population from 2017 to 2023. Noncitizens—half of whom are here illegally—were 30 percent less likely to be victims of violent crimes. This holds true in cities and among the young and old: immigrants experience fewer violent victimizations.
Is this because immigrants commit fewer violent crimes? Besides the general correlation between victims and offenders, the most compelling evidence for this point is the fact that immigrant victims are much less likely to know or have seen the offender before. This means that when we look at victimization rates by people known to the victim, the gap with the US-born widens to 64 percent for all immigrants and 49 percent for noncitizens. The differences in crimes committed by family members of the victims are similar.
When we compare these results to the differences in incarceration rates as recorded by the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, we see a remarkable convergence. Immigrants and noncitizens are almost exactly as unlikely to be in prison as they are to be victims of violent crime. This provides compelling support for the reliability of those earlier Cato studies.
When we compare the results by type of crime again, we find that immigrants are less likely to be victims of every broad type of violent crime, except robberies. But that’s because immigrants are being robbed by people they don’t know. When we look at victimization rates involving people they know, the gap reemerges. Immigrants are also less likely to be victimized by family members.
We also investigated whether immigrants are reporting these violent crimes to the police. It turns out that immigrants and noncitizens are actually more likely to report violent crimes to the police than the US-born population, despite many fearing deportation. This means that immigrant crime rates, measured by incarceration, arrests, or convictions, are likely not underestimated because immigrants report violent crimes as frequently as other US residents.
Immigrants contributed to helping police make at least half a million arrests from 2017 to 2023. Of course, this was before President Trump launched his mass deportation campaign in 2025 and started targeting immigrant victims of crimes. Our report shows that not only would victimization rates be higher without immigrants, but there would also be less crime reporting and fewer efforts to bring violent criminals to justice.
You can read the report here: Immigrants Cut Victimization Rates, Boost Crime Reporting