We find that immigrants were 64% less likely to be violently victimized by someone they know OR by a family member than the US-born. Noncitizens (half of whom are illegal) were half as likely to be victims of violent crimes by people they know than the US-born.
The Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh has shown immigrants are much less likely to be incarcerated than US-born. Countering skeptics, our paper shows that the immigrant/US-born gaps on violent victimization rates by known offenders align PRECISELY w/ gaps in incarceration rates!
IT GETS BETTER: We see that immigrants were way less likely to be victims for EVERY major type of violent crime: assaults, aggravated assaults, sex offenses, and threats. But wait… what about those robberies?
Robberies are the exception that proves the rule. It’s the one violent crime most likely to be committed by random people. Once we look at victimization rates where the victim knew the perp, we find immigrants again were HALF as likely to be victims of robberies!
Immigrants do commit crimes, even with US-born victims. But the data indicate that the reverse is more common: immigrants are more likely to be violently attacked by the US-born, lowering the rate of violent victimizations for YOU, the US-born citizen.
The media likes the immigrant-killing-American story way more than the reverse, but every time an immigrant is randomly attacked, it is likely they saved a US-born citizen from facing the same fate. If they weren’t there, it statistically would have been one of you.
NOT DONE YET: from 2017-23, before the recent crackdown has changed everything, the victimization survey shows that immigrants also REPORT VIOLENT CRIMES more frequently to the police than the US-born… even though we know many were scared to do so!
We find that immigrants worked with police on more than 5 million crimes from 2017 to 2023, resulting in at least half a million arrests (only includes arrests within 6 months, known to the victim). Immigrants were helping law enforcement before the mass deportation crackdown.
We can see that police requesting legal status more frequently for immigrants through the U visa program. Notice the upward trend stopped under Trump 1.0, restarted under Biden, and unfortunately, it’s reasonable to expect a catastrophic change now…
That’s because the Trump administration is trying to deport immigrants who report crimes. This is perhaps the most evil and counterproductive component of Trump’s mass deportation plan: if you care about stopping crime, you want immigrants to help!
Let's try to stop all violent crime because violent crime represents the most severe violation of someone’s rights. And it’s exactly for this reason that we should oppose mass deportation. It’s not just taking resources off the target: it’s only adding to the rights’ violations.
