Large-Scale Study Finds No Link Between Crime and Unauthorized Immigration
“Different versions of these methods have been around for decades. How else would anyone be able to know roughly how many undocumented people are in the United States?,” he says. “At UCI, I encountered a paper with an adaptation of the methods that I found credible and wondered, ‘why aren’t more researchers using this?’ So, I reproduced this method and adapted it for a different dataset to address other unanswered questions about the role of undocumented status. But our study, to my knowledge, is the first to apply these methods to the rich data that only exists in the RDC.”
Previous research examined the unauthorized immigration-crime link only at the state and metropolitan-area levels, the researchers say.
“While previous studies are clear about the broader relationship between immigration and crime, say, for city crime rates, none has really adequately addressed the concern I still hear along the lines of, ‘but should I be worried about illegal immigration in my neighborhood, specifically?’ ” Christopher explains. “I’m an economist by training, but part of the reason I love working in criminology is that when we provide answers to real concerns like these, we’re not just helping the general public understand, we’re also helping law enforcement understand where to target their efforts to be most effective.”
One study finding required closer examination.
While property crime fell and aggravated assaults declined significantly in neighborhoods with growing undocumented populations, robberies went up.
Does that mean undocumented immigrants are committing more crimes?
The research team says the evidence points in the opposite direction — toward victimization, not perpetration.
“An increase in robberies, despite decreases in all other crime categories, would be consistent with the idea that undocumented immigrants are disproportionately likely to be targets of robbery given greater involvement in the cash economy,” Hipp explains.
Because many undocumented individuals lack access to bank accounts and formal financial services, they are more likely to carry cash, making them attractive targets, Hipp notes. Fear of deportation also makes them reluctant to report crimes to police, leaving them more vulnerable. Researchers call it the “Walking ATM” phenomenon, and prior neighborhood-level studies have found consistent evidence for it.
The study cannot definitively confirm the victimization explanation since the data don’t identify the immigration status of crime victims, but the pattern across all other crime categories makes it the most plausible interpretation, according to the researchers.
Findings from the study raise questions about the effectiveness of current immigration policies.
The federal government is spending billions on immigration enforcement, citing public safety as the primary justification. Kubrin says there is little evidence to back up that claim.
“It’s well beyond time to rethink immigration enforcement in this country,” she emphasizes. “These policies are largely ineffective at enhancing public safety and may actually do more harm than good.”
Enforcement policies, she argues, are built on a flawed premise of widespread immigrant criminality. Beyond that, she says:
● they tend in practice to target low-level offenders rather than serious criminals;
● they damage trust between immigrant communities and police, making residents less likely to report crime or victimization; and
● they carry profound human costs, including the psychological trauma experienced by U.S.-born children whose parents are deported.
Beyond the crime statistics lies a broader social and economic toll. The team points to a study led by T. William Lester, UCI associate professor of urban planning and public policy, which found that Orange County businesses lost nearly $59 million in economic output over just eight weeks following intensified federal immigration enforcement.
“With policies like these, no one wins,” Kubrin says.
Mimi Ko Cruz is director of communications for the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine. The article was originally posted to the website of the University of California, Irvine.
