By Alex Nowrasteh, Andrew C. Forrester and Michelangelo Landgrave

Donald J. Trump launched his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in June 2015 by comments on illegal immigrants and the crime they commit in the United States. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you,” he said. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”1 A few weeks after Trump’s announcement, 32- year-old Kate Steinle was shot and killed by an illegal immigrant Jos´e Inez Garc´ıa Z´arate in San Francisco, California. Although Z´arate was later acquitted of all murder and manslaughter charges due to mistakes made by the prosecutor, his shooting of Steinle seemed to support Trump’s worry about illegal immigrants causing a crime spree and helped win him the election in 2016. As tragic as the shooting and death of Kate Steinle was, it was one of the 13,455 murders that year in the United States and it does not tell us how many of those victims were murdered by illegal immigrants.2 The most important measure that matters when judging the crime rates of illegal immigrants is how likely they are to be criminals compared to other sub-populations. If illegal immigrants are more likely to be criminals then their presence in the United States would raise crime rates, supporting Trump’s assertions. But if illegal immigrants are less likely to commit crime then they would lower the nationwide crime rate. Politically, this debate spills over to evaluating whether domestic immigration enforcement policies reduce crime. Illegal immigrant crime is also central to the debate over sanctuary jurisdictions that refuse to turn over many illegal immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the effects of a border wall, and whether Border Patrol requires more resources to counter crime along the border. Answering whether illegal immigrants are particularly crime prone is essential to addressing these concerns and setting efficient anti-crime policies.

Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2020. 30p.

By Walter A. Ewing, Daniel E. Martinez and Rubén G. Rumbaut

For more than a century, innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime. This holds true for both legal immigrants and the unauthorized, regardless of their country of origin or level of education. In other words, the overwhelming majority of immigrants are not “criminals” by any commonly accepted definition of the term. For this reason, harsh immigration policies are not effective in fighting crime. Unfortunately, immigration policy is frequently shaped more by fear and stereotype than by empirical evidence. As a result, immigrants have the stigma of “criminality” ascribed to them by an ever-evolving assortment of laws and immigration-enforcement mechanisms. Put differently, immigrants are being defined more and more as threats. Whole new classes of “felonies” have been created which apply only to immigrants, deportation has become a punishment for even minor offenses, and policies aimed at trying to end unauthorized immigration have been made more punitive rather than more rational and practical. In short, immigrants themselves are being criminalized.

Washington, DC: American Immigration Council, 2015. 28p.

By Pia Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny

Opponents of immigration often claim that immigrants, particularly those who are unauthorized, are more likely than U.S. natives to commit crimes and that they pose a threat to public safety. There is little evidence to support these claims. In fact, research overwhelmingly indicates that immigrants are less likely than similar U.S. natives to commit violent and property crimes, and that areas with more immigrants have similar or lower rates of violent and property crimes than areas with fewer immigrants. There are relatively few studies specifically of criminal behavior among unauthorized immigrants, but the limited research suggests that these immigrants also have a lower propensity to commit crime than their native-born peers, although possibly a higher propensity than legal immigrants. Evidence about legalization programs is consistent with these findings, indicating that a legalization program reduces crime rates. Meanwhile, increased border enforcement, which reduces unauthorized immigrant inflows, has mixed effects on crime rates. A large-scale legalization program, which is not currently under serious consideration, has more potential to improve public safety and security than several other policies that have recently been proposed or implemented.

Dallas: Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, 2019. 19p.

By Guillermo Vázquez del Mercado, Luis Félix, and Gerardo Carballo

Gangs and criminal organizations in Central America continue to seek means of adapting to COVID-19 while communities look to build resilience to its effects. The aim of this report is to contribute to the understanding of extortion in an evolving context as pandemic-related mobility restrictions are enforced and lifted in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama.

The report identifies the evolving role of women in gang schemes and dynamics; explores criminal structures in Panama and their relationship with extortion; and highlights trends among extortion practices as they shift to other criminal activities such as large-scale and local trafficking of cannabis and cocaine.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2021. 19p.

By Eunice Hyunhye Cho, Tara Tidwell Cullen and Clara Long

Justice-Free Zones: U.S. Immigration Detention Under the Trump Administration, a research report from the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, and the National Immigrant Justice Center, provides an in-depth examination of the state of immigrant detention. Through visits to five detention facilities, interviews with 150 detained people, and analysis of government data, this report shines a light onto our nation’s treatment of immigrants. Specifically, the findings illustrate how the immigrant detention system has grown since 2017, the poor conditions and inadequate medical care — even before the COVID-19 outbreak, and the due process hurdles faced by immigrants held in remote locations.

New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 2020. 82p.

By The Southern Poverty Law Center

This report features stories from women swept up in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that began on Jan. 2, 2016. The report by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights found that the federal government has engaged in a needlessly aggressive – and potentially unconstitutional – act against immigrants with these home raids that targeted women and children from Central America.

Montgomery, AL: SPLC, 2016. 28p.

By The United States Commission on Civil Rights

This Statutory Enforcement Report examines the civil rights and constitutional concerns that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (Commission) “raised with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its component [agencies] over the treatment of adult and minor [immigrant] detainees [who are being] held under federal law in detention centers across the country.” Specifically, this report analyzes the constitutional issues surrounding DHS’s treatment of detained immigrants as well as other selected federal agencies’ efforts to comply with established Performance Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS), the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA), and the federal standards for detaining unaccompanied minor children.

It is within the Commission’s mandate to examine, study, and report upon civil rights violations inconsistent with the federal civil rights laws, the United States Constitution and the federal standards applicable to all persons within the United States and its territories. By statute, the Commission is authorized to examine federal policies and procedures that have a detrimental effect on the equal protection of law guaranteed to all persons under the Constitution. With regard to immigration, in 1980, the Commission released a report entitled The Tarnished Golden Door: Civil Rights Issues in Immigration that examined the civil rights issues surrounding the enforcement of the immigration laws of the United States. That report identified numerous issues surrounding the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) administration and enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. Since the Commission published that 1980 report, however, federal immigration laws and their enforcement practices have undergone numerous, sweeping changes.

Washington, DC: The Commission, 2015. 276p.

By Nina Rabin

Young people in immigrant families are often characterized as a separate population in debates over immigration reform, with distinctive claims and interests as compared to their parents. Bifurcating the undocumented population between children and parents over-simplifies how immigration enforcement impacts families. This article challenges the dichotomy between children and parents by studying how young people who are not direct enforcement targets are nevertheless impacted by immigration enforcement policies, regardless of their own immigration status. These impacts, which I call “secondary immigration enforcement,” often manifest as family separations. To render secondary immigration enforcement visible, I studied 38 young people in Arizona who are living on their own – without either biological parent – at least in part because of immigration enforcement policies. Drawing on in-depth interviews and self-assessments of psycho-social functioning, I describe what secondary immigration enforcement looks like and how it operates. I illustrate that deportation statistics alone fail to capture the extent of immigration enforcement because they do not encompass the complex impacts of secondary enforcement. In addition to the acute disruptions caused by deportations of family members, the young people in the study also experienced family separation as a result of immigration enforcement’s interaction with three other key factors: family dysfunction, extreme poverty, and educational aspirations.

Tucson: The University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law, 2017. 37p.

By Izabella Majcher and Michael Flynn

This Global Detention Project Special Report, commissioned by the Norwegian Red Cross, systematically compares conditions and operations at detention centres in five European countries to identify practices that may be used to develop “harm reducing” strategies in detention. The report, which the Norwegian Red Cross commissioned in an effort to identify possible reforms in Norway’s detention practices, addresses several key questions:

In Norway’s Trandum Detention Centre, multiple reports have highlighted an overzealously punitive and restrictive detention regime where detainees consider themselves to be “treated as criminals” even though they are not serving criminal prison sentences. Despite repeated recommendations from relevant experts, including the country’s Parliamentary Ombudsman, many important reforms have not been implemented.

The report highlights several key areas for promoting reforms, both at Trandum and in other facilities across Europe, including: placing immigration detainees in the custody of social welfare institutions rather than public security agencies; reforming operating rules on everything from food preparation to electronic communications; and shedding detention centres of carceral elements, including the aspect of guards and staff members and the internal layout and regime of detention centres.

Geneva: Global Detention Project, 2019. 86p.

By Pia Orrenius

Border enforcement of immigration laws raises the costs of illegal immigration, while interior enforcement also lowers its benefits. Used together, border and interior enforcement therefore reduce the net benefits of illegal immigration and should lower the probability that an individual will decide to illegally migrate. While empirical studies find that border and interior enforcement serve as deterrents to illegal immigration, immigration enforcement is costly and carries unintended consequences, such as a decrease in circular migration, an increase in smuggling, and higher prevalence of off-the-books employment and use of fraudulent and falsified documents.

Bonn: Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), 2019.. 11p.

By Brian Bell

Immigration is one of the most important policy debates in Western countries. However, one aspect of the debate is often mischaracterized by accusations that higher levels of immigration lead to higher levels of crime. The evidence, based on empirical studies of many countries, indicates that there is no simple link between immigration and crime, but legalizing the status of immigrants has beneficial effects on crime rates. Crucially, the evidence points to substantial differences in the impact on property crime, depending on the labor market opportunities of immigrant groups.

Bonn: Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), 2019. 11p.

By Burgund Isakov, Anita, Husremović, Dženana, Krasić, Bogdan, Marković, Violeta, Milic, Nikolina, Ristić, Tatjana, Trkulja, Alina, Žegarac, Nevenka

In this report, Save the Children and the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Sarajevo present in-depth research into the level and types of violence that children experience while attempting to reach Western Europe via the Balkans route, the circumstances of that violence, and the policies and practices that exist to support children. They also make recommendations for governments, NGOs and other stakeholders to strengthen the protection and support available to these children.

Every child who participated in this research recounted being subjected to physical, psychological, sexual or other types of violence, directly or indirectly. This violence occurred in their country of origin, during their journey, when crossing borders, in reception, asylum and detention centres, in squats, in the street and in the workplace.

The research was conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, key transit countries on the threshold of the European Union and on the way to Western Europe. It is based on in-depth interviews with 48 children aged between 13 and 19 years old. This report also draws on focus group discussions with 27 professionals in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, mostly field workers who had extensive experience working with refugee and migrant children, and an extensive literature review. The findings of this research were analyzed thematically and interpreted within several keys: using ecological systems theory, an approach based on the rights of the child, and on trauma and resilience-based knowledge.

Belgrade: Save the Children International, Save the Children North West Balkans, 2022. 122p.

This guide begins by describing the problem of exploiting women who have been trafficked into the United States, and the aspects of human trafficking that contribute to it. Throughout the guide, the word “trafficked” shall mean internationally trafficked, unless otherwise stated. Additionally, the guide’s focus is on the final period inthe process of trafficking at which women are further exploited by those into whose hands they are passed. This is the poi nt at which human trafficking becomes a problem for local police and so the guide identifies a series of questions that can help analyze local problems related to trafficking. Finally, it reviews responses to the exploitation of trafficked women and examines what is known about the effectiveness of these responses from research and police practice.

Read more at the Center for Problem Oriented Policing

Edited by Andrea Di Nicola, Andrea Cauduro, Marco Lombardi and Paolo Ruspini

Who is the client of trafficked prostitution? What fuels the demand for trafficked prostitution as opposed to other forms? Which are the most effective policies for what type of prostitution? The research in this book aims to answer these questions with an innovative approach. The editors have explored the hidden world of human trafficking for prostitution and profiled its clients. In doing so, they have refuted some common stereotypes about clients while inspiring the elaboration of balanced guidelines for managing prostitution, protecting the victims and thus tackling its undesired trafficking component.

Cham: Springer, 2008. 266p

Edited by Matthew J Gibney and Randall Hansen

Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present is an introduction to the key concepts, terms, personalities, and real-world issues associated with the surge of immigration from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. It focuses on the United States, but is also the first encyclopedic work on the subject that reflects a truly global perspective. With contributions from the world's foremost authorities on the subject, Immigration and Asylum offers nearly 200 entries organized around four themes: immigration and asylum; the major migrating groups around the world; expulsions and other forced population movements; and the politics of migration. In addition to basic entries, the work includes in-depth essays on important trends, events, and current conditions.

Santa Barbara, CA:: ABC-CLIO Press, 2005. 3vols. (1095p.)

By Australia. Parliament. House of Representatives, Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Human Rights Subcommittee.

This report examines the global prevalence of human organ trafficking and the scope of Australian participation within this illicit trade. The report further considers international frameworks to combat organ trafficking and organ transplant tourism and specifically recommends that Australia sign and ratify the Council of Europe Convention against Trafficking in Human Organs.

The report further recommends that the Australian Government pursue a range of measures to strengthen Australia’s involvement in international efforts to combat human organ trafficking, improve relevant data collection, support public health education programs, strengthen Australia’s legal prohibitions on organ trafficking, and thoroughly investigate reforms that would enhance Australia’s domestic organ donation program.

Canberra: Australian Parliament, 2018. 178p

By INTERPOL

With this strategic analytical report, INTERPOL, under the European Union funded project ENACT, assesses how trafficking in human beings for the purpose of organ removal (THBOR) affects North and West Africa and to what extent this crime connects both regions with other parts of the world. Globally, when the supply of organs cannot be fulfilled by ethical transplant practices the supply is often done with illegally sourced organs. This implies that organs have been purchased from individuals that have been coerced, through a wide range of means, into having their organ(s) removed. Moreover, THBOR is reported to be a highly lucrative form of human trafficking, with victim-donors receiving only a small fraction of the total amount of money that organ buyers are willing to pay to brokers and the medical sector for the sourcing of organs. While this type of trafficking is believed to be largely underreported, it is important for law enforcement agencies in North and West Africa to have a nuanced approach to THBOR and to set priorities, so as to identify potential victims, investigate trafficking in human being cases that can be motivated by the organ trade and target criminal networks that facilitate THBOR.

ENACT. 2021. 38P.

By Arthur Caplan, Beatriz Domínguez-Gil, Rafael Matesanz and Carmen Prior

Trafficking in human beings is a real and growing problem all over the world. Human beings are bought and sold as a commodity. The criminals responsible for these massive violations of human rights and the rule of law are buying and selling human beings for different reasons, but the trafficking for the purpose of the removal of organs is clearly one of its most abhorrent forms. In spite of that, this form of trafficking has been relatively unknown and insufficiently researched.

Strasbourg Cedex: Directorate General of Human Rights and Legal Affairs, Council of Europe and the United Nations, 2009. 103p.

By The Polaris Project

From sex trafficking within escort services to labor trafficking of farmworkers, the ways humans are exploited differ greatly. Each type has unique strategies for recruiting and controlling victims and concealing the crime.

For years, we have been staring at an incomplete chess game, moving pieces without seeing hidden squares or fully understanding the power relationships between players. The Typology of Modern Slavery, our blurry understanding of the scope of the crime is now coming into sharper focus.

Polaris analyzed more than 32,000 cases of human trafficking documented between December 2007 and December 2016 through its operation of the National Human Trafficking Hotline and BeFree Textline—the largest data set on human trafficking in the United States ever compiled and publicly analyzed. Polaris’s research team analyzed the data and developed a classification system that identifies 25 types of human trafficking in the United States. Each has its own business model, trafficker profiles, recruitment strategies, victim profiles, and methods of control that facilitate human trafficking.

Washington, DC: Polaris Project, 2017. 80p.

By The International Labour Organization (ILO), Walk Free, and International Organization for Migration

Modern slavery is the very antithesis of social justice and sustainable development. The 2021 Global Estimates indicate there are 50 million people in situations of modern slavery on any given day, either forced to work against their will or in a marriage that they were forced into. This number translates to nearly one of every 150 people in the world. The estimates also indicate that situations of modern slavery are by no means transient – entrapment in forced labour can last years, while in most cases forced marriage is a life sentence. And sadly, the situation is not improving. The 2021 Global Estimates show that millions more men, women, and children have been forced to work or marry in the period since the previous estimates were released in 2017.

Geneva: International Labour Organization (ILO), Walk Free, and International Organization for Migration, 2022. 144p.