IMMIGRATION & CRIMEMisuse of Texas Data Understates Illegal Immigrant Criminality
Activists and academics have been misusing data from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) in studies when claiming that illegal immigrants have relatively low crime rates. These studies fail to appreciate the fact that it can take years for Texas to identify convicts, while they are in custody, as illegal immigrants. These studies thus misclassify as native-born a significant number of offenders who are later identified as illegal immigrants.
Activists and academics have been misusing data from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) in studies claiming that illegal immigrants have relatively low crime rates. These studies do not appreciate that it can take years for Texas to identify convicts as illegal immigrants while they are in custody. As a result, the studies misclassify as native-born a significant number of offenders who are later identified as illegal immigrants.
Facts About the DPS Data
· Due to delays in identification, the number of illegal immigrants arrested or incarcerated in Texas is undercounted at any given time.
· Recently convicted illegal immigrants are the most likely to be undercounted.
· Conversely, Texas is more likely to ascertain the immigration status of offenders who have served long prison terms for serious crimes.
· The illegal immigrant conviction rate for “any crime” — which would be dominated by offenses requiring little or no prison time — is not meaningful due to undercount.
Properly interpreted, the DPS data suggests that illegal immigrants in Texas are convicted of homicide and sexual assault at higher rates than the state average. Significant uncertainties remain, however, especially regarding lesser offenses.
Background
When people are arrested in Texas, the state’s Department of Public Safety (DPS) sends their fingerprints to the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to determine immigration status. Illegal immigrants who have had encounters with immigration officials, such as at the border or during a prior arrest, will be identified by DHS and then flagged as illegal in the DPS data. However, the immigration status of a significant share of immigrants arrested in Texas cannot be verified by this system because immigration officials have never encountered them. Therefore, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (DCJ) continues to investigate the immigration status of offenders while they are incarcerated.
At any given time, each arrestee or convict falls into one of four categories in the DPS data:
1. Legal immigrants identified by DHS upon intake/arrest;
2. Illegal immigrants identified by DHS upon intake/arrest;
3. Illegal immigrants identified by DCJ in prison; and
4. Other/unknown (including both the native-born and yet-to-be-identified immigrants).
