In case you're trapped in an elevator with a Make America Groan Again friend or relative, someone we know asked a popular AI application:
How many violent crimes were committed by non-citizens in the USA during the most recent ten years for which numbers or rates are available?
The response suggests the reason why so many citizens have been arrested by ICE: It is they (we?) and not the aliens who are the principal perpetrators. The app said...
There is no national U.S. data series that cleanly reports “violent crimes committed by non‑citizens” each year for the last ten years, so the number you are asking for cannot be directly calculated from official statistics.[1][2][3]`
Why the number is not available
- The main national sources (FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey) do not routinely publish offender citizenship for all violent crimes, only limited demographics such as age, sex, and race/ethnicity.[2][1]
- Citizenship data started to appear in NCVS microdata only recently and in a way that focuses on victims’ status (citizen vs non‑citizen), not a full annual count of non‑citizen offenders.[3][4][5]
- A 2021 BJS report covers “Non‑U.S. Citizens in the Federal Criminal Justice System, 1998–2018,” but this is limited to federal cases and mixes immigration and non‑immigration offenses; it does not translate into a comprehensive annual national count of violent crimes by non‑citizens.[6]
What we can say from existing research
- Studies using state‑level data with citizenship information (for example, Texas arrest records) find that U.S.‑born citizens are more than twice as likely to be arrested for violent crimes as undocumented immigrants, with legal immigrants in between.[7][8]
- Analyses of NCVS data show that foreign‑born people (including non‑citizens) have lower violent victimization rates than U.S.‑born individuals, implying lower exposure to violent crime both as victims and, indirectly, as offenders.[4][5][9][10]
Practical bottom line
- For the last decade, there is no official nationwide table or report that gives annual counts or rates of violent crimes committed by non‑citizens, so any precise ten‑year number would be speculative.[1][2][3][6]
- The best available research that does disaggregate by citizenship or immigration status consistently finds that non‑citizens (including undocumented immigrants) are *less* likely, not more likely, to be arrested for or otherwise involved in violent crimes than similarly situated U.S.‑born citizens.[8][10][11][7]
Some might conclude that ICE is just picking low-hanging fruit, with the primary purpose not of expelling violent offenders but of instilling fear. What do you think?
