By Karen Musalo, Anna Law, Annie Daher, and Katharine Donato

Immigration judges (IJs), housed within the Executive Office for Immigration Review within the Department of Justice (DOJ), make decisions in asylum and withholding claims, which are life or death matters. And although their title is “judge,” IJs are DOJ attorneys who lack independence and are particularly susceptible to political pressures. Federal court judges and scholars alike have criticized the quality and fairness of IJ decision-making, and many studies have been carried out to better understand the factors that impact it. The prior studies have relied principally on quantitative data because IJ decisions are not publicly available or searchable in any existing database. The authors of this study had unprecedented access to more than five hundred IJ decisions, allowing for both a quantitative and qualitative analysis. Our findings were consistent with other studies in noting that IJ experience and gender made a difference in case outcomes, with male IJs and IJs with enforcement backgrounds denying protection at higher rates. We were able to identify other significant trends as well, including that the most common reasons why IJs denied protection to credible asylum seekers were their findings that they failed to meet the extremely stringent requirements of two elements of the refugee definition elements which arguably are overly restrictive and inconsistent with international norms. We also observed patterns of incompetence and bias among these decisions.

This Article recommends several policy reforms to address the shortcomings we identify, among them: (1) the creation of Article I immigration courts, (2) improvement of IJ competence through more stringent hiring standards and continuing education, (3) increased diversity of IJs based on employment experience, (4) reduced deference to the Board of Immigration Appeals in reviewing cases, and (5) allocating additional resources to immigration adjudication.

Boston College Law Review [Vol. 65:2743], 2024, 58p.

By Elana Fogel, Kate Evans

Traffic stops are the most common form of police-initiated contact with members of the public. The sheer volume of traffic stops combined with their use as a pretext to surveil Black and Latiné communities has generated substantial scholarship and movements for police reform. Yet this commentary assumes that the subjects of traffic stops are U.S. citizens. At the same time, scholarship on the intersection of criminal and immigration law and the convergence of their enforcement methods focuses on traffic stops as the immediate entry point for removal proceedings. This Article addresses the gap in literature by describing the experience of noncitizens who endure frequent traffic stops that result in neither immediate criminal nor immigration proceedings but nonetheless produce significant legal and nonlegal consequences-consequences that are likely to grow under a second Trump administration.

This Article frames the experience of traffic stops for noncitizens as a form of "slow deportation." It describes how the use of traffic stops to police noncitizens extends the system of racialized social control to immigrant communities with the effect of surveilling both race and status. It surveys scholarship across disciplines, racial categories, and citizenship status and uses our clients' stories to map the cumulative, compounding, and subterranean harms of traffic stops that culminate in the emotional, social, and sometimes legal exclusion of noncitizens and families. The Article concludes by proposing new approaches to counseling, policy reform, and coalition building informed by the lens of slow deportation.

Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Series No. 2025-18,

By David J. Bier

America traditionally had few immigration restrictions, but since the 1920s, the law has banned most aspiring immigrants. Today, fewer than 1 percent of people who want to move permanently to the United States can do so legally. Immigrants cannot simply get an exception to immigrate any more than restaurateurs in the 1920s could simply get an exception to sell alcohol. Instead, just as Prohibition granted only a few exemptions for religious, industrial, or medical uses of alcohol, people seeking an exception to immigration prohibition must also fit into preexisting carve-outs for a select few. Many Americans have the false impression that these carve-outs are realistic options for potential immigrants to join American society, but the government’s restrictive criteria render the legal paths available only in the most extreme cases. Even when someone qualifies, annual immigration caps greatly delay and, more frequently, eliminate the immigrant’s only

chance to come to the United States. Legal immigration is less like waiting in line and more like winning the lottery: it happens, but it is so rare that it is irrational to expect it in any individual case. This study provides a uniquely comprehensive, jargon-free explanation of U.S. rules for legal permanent immigration. Some steps are simple and reasonable, but most steps serve only as unjustified obstacles to immigrating legally. For some immigrants, this restrictive system sends them into the black market of illegal immigration. For others, it sends them to other countries, where they contribute to the quality of life in their new homes. And for still others, it requires them to remain in their homeland, often underemployed and sometimes in danger. Whatever the outcome, the system punishes both the prospective immigrants and Americans who would associate, contract, and trade with them. Congress and the administration can do better, and this paper explains how.

Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2023. 88p.

By Eric P. Baumer, Min Xie

Research Summary

Our understanding of how immigration enforcement impacts crime has been informed exclusively by data from police crime statistics. This study complements existing research by using longitudinal multilevel data from the National Crime Victimization Survey for 2005–2014 to simultaneously assess the impact of the three predominant immigration policies that have been implemented in local communities. The results indicate that the activation of Secure Communities and 287(g) task force agreements significantly increased violent victimization risk among Latinos, whereas they showed no evident impact on victimization risk among non-Latino Whites and Blacks. The activation of 287(g) jail enforcement agreements and anti-detainer policies had no significant impact on violent victimization risk during the period.

Policy Implications

Contrary to their stated purpose of enhancing public safety, our results show that the Secure Communities program and 287(g) task force agreements did not reduce crime, but instead eroded security in U.S. communities by increasing the likelihood that Latinos experienced violent victimization. These results support the Federal government's ending of 287(g) task force agreements and its more recent move to end the Secure Communities program. Additionally, the results of our study add to the evidence challenging claims that anti-detainer policies pose a threat to violence risk.

Criminology & Public Policy, 22, 417–455. 2023, 39p.

By Christian Ambrosius and David A. Leblang

The forced return of migrants is an important part of migration policy toolkits. An increased risk of deportation, politicians argue, will deter subsequent irregular migration. We explore this argument for the case of forced removals from the United States and find that rather than operating as a deterrent for future migrants, this policy had a boomerang effect. The forced return of migrants with a track record of crime generated negative externalities in the form of higher violence in their countries of origin, counteracting the deterrence effect of higher deportation risk. We apply mediation analysis to a panel of Latin American and Caribbean countries and decompose the effect of deportations on emigration into three coef­fi­cients of interest: a total effect of deportations on later emigration, an effect of deportations on the mediator variable of violence, and an effect of violence on emigration. We address the endogeneity of our key explanatory variables—deportations and violence—using migrants’ exposure to the unequal and staggered implementation of policies intended to facilitate deportations at the level of U.S. states as a source of exogenous variation. We show that migration intentions and asylum requests increase in response to deportation threats. This effect is mediated through increased violence and is strongly driven by dynamics in Central America. Although the total number of apprehensions at the U.S. southern border in response to deportation threats does not show a clear pattern, we observe an increase in the share of unaccompanied minors and the share of entire family units among those apprehended, suggesting a shift in migration strategies and composition.

Demography (2025) 62(2):419–439 DOI 10.1215/00703370-11863789 © 2025

By Silvia Carta

In 2024, PICUM’s media monitoring confirmed a growing trend: at least 142 individuals faced criminal or administrative proceedings for acting in solidarity with migrants in the EU. Additionally, our media monitoring found that at least 91 migrants were subjected to criminalisation, mostly under counter-smuggling legislation. But we know that this number is an undercount, as other organisations recorded many more cases1 in their own work. Furthermore, news articles highlighted several forms of non-judicial harassment directed at human rights defenders and civil society organisations within the EU. Due to the significant gap in statistical and official public data2 regarding individuals accused, charged, or convicted for smuggling and related offenses, this briefing relies on a media alert system and desk research, which may not comprehensively capture all relevant incidents reported across EU countries. Consequently, the figures presented likely underestimate the true extent of such occurrences. In addition, it is likely that many cases, particularly regarding people who are migrants, go unreported by the media.3 Beyond the continuously high number of people who have been criminalised in 2024, this report highlights different trends. Under the current legal system, charges of facilitation and smuggling can be used to criminalise migrants or people without regular residence and those acting in solidarity with them. Despite numerous and protracted judicial proceedings, actual convictions remain low. This report also looks at the several cases of people and organisations across Europe that have experienced non-judicial harassment. Moreover, the findings of our media monitoring in 2024 seek to shed light on the criminalisation of people crossing borders irregularly, which has grown of at least 20% in comparison to monitoring in 2023,4 but remains a relatively hidden phenomenon. A comparison between PICUM’s findings and existing research reveals a tendency for the media to underreport the criminalisation of migrants.5 Yet, the majority of cases analysed by PICUM align with research indicating that migrants, including children, often face unfounded accusations, endure harsh legal processes and face years of pre-trial detention for the sole fact of migrating   

Brussels: PICUM, 2025. 29p.

By Elina Treyger, Maya Buenaventura, Ian Mitch, Laura Bellows, John S. Hollywood

Between 2020 and 2024, increasing volumes of aliens sought entry at the southwest U.S. border without valid entry documents. Several policies adopted since 2020 have sought to incentivize aliens — particularly those who have intentions of seeking asylum — to present themselves at ports of entry (POEs) and disincentivize crossing unlawfully between POEs. These trends and policies raise a question of the capacity of U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP's) Office of Field Operations (OFO) to process such aliens and unaccompanied alien children (UACs) through POEs. A congressional request sought an analysis that could shed light on whether and how well OFO would be able to process increased volumes and the resources it would need to do so. This report is the result of that analysis.

Key Findings

There are multiple pathways for processing likely asylum seekers and UACs through POEs. This is a function of several factors, such as whether the alien arrives with a CBP One appointment; whether they are a member of a family unit, a UAC, or a single adult; whether derogatory information is discovered about the alien; and detention facility capacity.

OFO's capacity to process this population varies across time and POEs and is constrained by a mix of individual case characteristics; staffing; infrastructure and equipment; capacity; the capacity of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; and operational demands.

The authors infer that OFO's effective monthly capacity to process likely asylum seekers and UACs in a safe, humane, and orderly manner at the level of resources present as of May 2023 is around 47,000–48,000 aliens.

Substantially increasing OFO processing capacity such that all or most likely asylum seekers and UACs (based on levels observed between October 2022 and February 2024) are processed at POEs would be extremely challenging at best.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2025, 109p.

By Ximena Canal Laiton

This paper explores the use of smugglers by migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean on their journeys through South America. It is based on 1,129 4Mi surveys and 29 interviews with migrants in Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and Uruguay conducted between July and October 2024, along with 11 key informant interviews. This paper presents findings on the profiles of migrants who hired smugglers along their journey, the motivations for using them, the services sought, and their general perceptions of smugglers. It also provides information on smugglers’ profiles and modes of operation on South American migration routes. This paper offers empirical evidence to inform decision-makers and humanitarian actors. Key findings 1 4Mi is MMC's flagship quantitative data collection project. 4Mi questionnaires cover why people leave their places of origin, the alternatives they explored, destination options, influences on decision-making, and other topics (global data and data on Latin America and the Caribbean can be accessed through 4Mi Interactive dashboards). For more information on MMC terminology, see: Mixed Migration Centre, MMC (2024a) MMC’s understanding and use of the terms Mixed migration and Human smuggling. | The international instrument defining migrant smuggling is the 2000 Protocol against the smuggling of migrants by land, sea and air, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. • The use of smugglers is not the norm on migration routes through South America, with only one in five survey respondents reporting having used smugglers during their migration process. Low smuggler use is likely the result of freedom of movement under regional agreements, established migrant networks, and familiarity with well-trodden migration routes, and limited financial capacity. • Smuggler use among Venezuelan respondents is higher than among other South American nationalities (23%, compared to 9% of Colombians, 5% of those from the Southern Cone, and just 2% from other Andean countries), likely due to increasing entry restrictions placed upon them. • Smuggler use increases when movements are more restricted, for example crossing into Peru and Chile, where migrants surveyed and interviewed commonly reported relying on smugglers. • The main services provided by smugglers to respondents were assistance with crossing borders (83%), transportation (65%), the provision of food and water (50%), the provision of documents (33%), and dealing with authorities (31%). • Smugglers in South America have diverse profiles and operate via multiple methods. The majority come from local communities or are migrants who live and operate in transit locations. However, a few smugglers operate in countries of origin—primarily Venezuela—offering “all-inclusive packages” from Venezuela to the intended destination. • Most migrants who use smugglers perceive them as service providers. Some see them as a buffer against the dangers along the route, and another small portion as a potential perpetrator of abuse. • Smugglers were the least mentioned possible perpetrator of incidents among surveyed migrants (7%); other actors, such as members of criminal gangs (55%) and host communities (53%), rank considerably higher as possible threats.

Mixed Migration Centre, 2025. 22p

By Eva-Maria Egger

Research suggests that the social effects of internal migration may be substantially different from those associated with international immigration. In this paper, I provide the first evidence of the effect of internal migration on crime with panel data from Brazilian microregiões (microregions). Using local labor demand shocks as an instrumental variable, I find that a 10% increase in the in-migration rate translates to a 9.4% increase in the homicide rate in destination areas. I propose that the effect is driven by intermediating labor market effects and not by the migrants themselves. Exploring these possible channels, I do not find that crime-prone migrants drive the results. The effect is only significant in locations with high past crime rates, indicating crime inertia, and in places with a small informal sector, suggesting that the impact of internal migration is conditioned by the ability of local labor markets to accommodate migrants. This finding is supported by a negative effect of in-migration on formal employment in rigid markets and a positive effect on unemployment among young men, with the latter explaining most of the total effect.

Economic Development and Cultural Change, Volume 71, Number 1, October 2022, 37p.

By Amalia Campos-Delgado, Karine Côté-Boucher

By focusing on the externalisation of US bordering into Mexico, we consider the institutional setting that both limits and channels gestures of care and empathy in migrant detention. Working within a framework that highlights the connections between the global and the intimate, and by proposing to read these connections as they unfold into an intimate geopolitics of humanitarian borderwork, we unpack the effects of Mexico’s recent shift towards humanitarian border politics on the interactions between detained migrants and border agents. Together with the material scarcity in which border officers operate, horrendous detention conditions and increased investments in detention facilities, this shift produces care-control dynamics that are specific to bordering in transit countries. We identify three ‘tactics of empathy’ deployed by Mexican border officers as they attempt to morally legitimise border control in this new environment, while concurrently avoiding legal liabilities and taming migrants under their custody. We argue that these tactics are less a manifestation of an ethics of care than a response to situations occurring in transit migrant detention where morality and instrumental rationality become entangled.

Geopolitics, 29:2, 471-494, DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2022.2039633, 2024., 22p.

By Lucy Hovil, Sasha Jesperson and Jennifer Vallentine, with assistance from Julia Litzkow, Maël Galisson and Hugo Eduardo Jovel Majano

Against the backdrop of increasingly restrictive migration policies, this study explores recent irregular migration dynamics to the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom(UK). It aims to understand how migration and smuggling dynamics have shifted since 2023 and the impact of these shifts on people on the move. It also considers the trends and changes that may continue to emerge in the face of increasing migration restrictions in Europe.

Mixed Migration Centre, 2025. 43p.

By Lucy Hovil, Sasha Jesperson and Jennifer Vallentine, with assistance from Julia Litzkow, Maël Galisson and Hugo Eduardo Jovel Majano

Against the backdrop of increasingly restrictive policies, this study explores recent irregular migration dynamics to the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom(UK). The study combined desk research with 43 key informant interviews and 52 in-depth interviews with migrants in Europe who had travelled between mid-2023 and the time of the interview in 2024. It focuses on three key routes into the EU, including the Central Mediterranean route (CMR), the two major routes into Spain – the Western Mediterranean route (WMR) and the Northwest African (Atlantic route) – as well as the English Channel crossing into the United Kingdom1, to understand how migration and smuggling dynamics have shifted since 2023, as well as the impact of these shifts on people on the move. It also considers the trends and changes that may continue to emerge in the face of increasing migration restrictions in Europe. Key findings Despite a downturn in arrivals between 2023 to 2024, the demand for irregular migration remains strong Overall, the numbers of arrivals into Europe in 2024 was lower than in 2023. However, the drivers of migration remain strong, and the hostile environment toward migrants in transit countries also continues to rise. As a result, demand for irregular migration continues, as do movements across the Mediterranean and Atlantic into the EU, and across the channel into the UK. The recent decline in numbers is likely indicative of a short-term fluctuation, rather than the beginning of the end of irregular sea movements to the EU. The push to attempt the Mediterranean or Atlantic crossing to the EU is likely to remain constant – if not grow. There have been considerable fluctuations across the major routes into the European Union; as one route declines, others surge or re-emerge An overall decrease in numbers between 2023 and 2024 was aided by decreased movements along the Western Mediterranean and Central Mediterranean Routes. However, simultaneously there were upticks in movements along the Atlantic route, English Channel crossing and Eastern Mediterranean route2. Figures towards the end of 2024 on the CMR also suggest an upwards trend that may continue into 2025. While politicians have claimed that the various agreements and policies implemented in 2023 and 2024 appear to have successfully reduced arrivals, along the CMR in particular, it still remains the most frequented irregular sea route into mainland Europe. Further, other routes, for example the Atlantic route, have (re)emerged. Historically the CMR has seen fluctuations indicating it could easily increase once more, exactly as it did from 2021 onwards after the previous big decrease post-2017. Smuggling operations continue to adapt (and thrive) in the face of policy changes Smuggling networks are agile and adaptable, deploying new strategies to circumvent counter-smuggling initiatives. Instead of extinguishing supply, stricter policies, particularly on the CMR, English Channel and Atlantic routes, have resulted in increasingly adaptive and professionalised smuggler operations. While the WMR has been the least prominent route between 2023 and 2024, smuggling networks have not disappeared. Instead, they have diversified their operations, with evidence of involvement in other criminal activity, to ensure a continued income stream. This suggests that smuggler networks could easily be ready to return to, or expand migrant smuggling if demand returns. Hardline policies have not prevented irregular migration and only heightened risks for migrants Policy approaches across Europe continue to be led by political pressure to be seen as ‘tough on migration’, leading to prioritising the control of movement and anti-smuggling measures over the creation of legal pathways and the protection of those moving. From the perspective of migrants, there is little evidence to suggest that deterrence policies do, indeed, deter people from seeking to move to Europe irregularly. As demand for irregular migration remains, migrants are likely to be more reliant on smugglers, as a way to bypass restrictions. The impact of restrictive policies on migrants is that sea crossings are taking longer, migrants are taking more circuitous journeys to avoid detection, and larger numbers are being crammed into boats lacking adequate safety equipment by unscrupulous smugglers. In addition to the risks at sea, migrants face increasingly hostile conditions when stuck in key transit countries, as those countries receive continued pressure from the EU to curb movements.

Denmark: Mixed Migration Centre (2025) 36p.

By Darlène Dubuisson, Patricia Campos-Medina, Shannon Gleeson, and Kati L. Griffith

This review examines the historical and contemporary factors driving immigrant worker precarity and the central role of race in achieving worker justice. We build from the framework of racial capitalism and historicize the legacies of African enslavement and Indigenous dispossession, which have cemented an exclusionary economic system in the United States and globally. We consider how racism and colonial legacies create migrant displacement and shape the experiences of immigrant workers. We also detail how racism permeates the immigration bureaucracy, driving migrant worker precarity. The traditional labor movement has played an important role in closing this gap, but increasingly so have worker centers and the immigrant rights movement as a whole. These partnerships have had to navigate coalitional tensions as they build new strategies for realizing immigrant worker rights.  

  Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci. 2023. 19:109–29 pages

By  Krystlelynn Caraballo and Volkan Topalli

Research suggests undocumented immigrants are vulnerable to
robbery, burglary, and car theft, but studies have focused exclusively on victims’ perspectives rather than those of street offenders. This study draws from in-depth, semi-structured inter views of 25 active street offenders from a major southeastern US city to understand offenders’ perspectives and motivations for
deciding whether to target immigrants. Our findings support that some street offenders explicitly select targets based on perceived individual and socio-structural risk factors and the assumption of undocumented status. These include objective and subjective assessments of immigrants’ reliance on cash-intensive employment, fear of deportation, and inability to access formal justice systems. Our interviews with offenders reveal they and their acquaintances rely on mainstream stereotypes of immigrants (documented and undocumented) and of Latinx populations to determine vulnerability, select targets, and to a lesser extent.

Justice Quarterly, 40(1); 2023, 31p.

By Daniil MENSHYKOV, Tetiana PRODAN, Halyna LUTSYSHYN, Maksym IATSYNA, Arzu HADZHIIEVA

The aim of the study is to assess the impact of migration indicators on the crime rates in selected countries. The research employed cluster, correlation and regression analyses as the main methods. The analysis established that the impact of migration on crime in different countries differs significantly in terms of strength and direction. In particular, it was found that the increased share of refugees in the population of Egypt, Mauritius and the USA is associated with the decreased Crime Index. The obtained results indicate that the degree and direction of the influence of migration on crime depends on the specific situation in the country, which covers various aspects of social, political, economic and other dimensions. The conclusions of the research can be useful for shaping migration policy and preventing bias in this process

Revista Jurídica Portucalense nº 36 (2024) - Transnational Law

By Luisa Feline Freier & Leda M. Pérez

This article examines how Venezuelan forced migrants in Peru experience xenophobic discrimination, which has become increasingly linked to their criminalisation as thieves and murderers. Based on 12 months of qualitative fieldwork, including 72 in-depth interviews, five focus groups, and a survey (N116) in five Peruvian cities, we explore how Venezuelans experience, and make sense of, discrimination and criminalisation in everyday life. First, we discuss how criminalisation compares to general xenophobic discrimination, and other types of discrimination experiences. Second, we juxtapose the prevalence of xenophobic discrimination and criminalisation experiences across the five cities of our study, and between public spaces and the workspace. We then move to the qualitative discussion of the criminalisation experience in these different spaces. Fourth, we discuss how Venezuelan migrants perceive this criminalising discrimination as linked to their villanisation in the media and political discourses. Finally, we discuss our findings and make suggestions for further research. The paper contributes to the literature on migrant criminalisation by exploring how criminalisation processes play out in the context of large-scale intraregional forced displacement in the global South.

European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research

Volume 27, pages 113–133, (2021)

By Brian G. Knight and Ana Tribin 

This paper investigates the link between violent crime and immigration using data from Colombian municipalities during the recent episode of immigration from Venezuela. The key finding is that, following the closing and then re-opening of the border in 2016, which precipitated a massive immigration wave, homicides in Colombia increased in areas close to the border with Venezuela. Using information on the nationality of the victim, we find that this increase was driven by homicides involving Venezuelan victims, with no evidence of a statistically significant increase in homicides in which Colombians were victimized. Thus, in contrast to xenophobic fears that migrants might victimize natives, it was migrants, rather than natives, who faced risks associated with immigration. Using arrests data, there is no corresponding increase in arrests for homicides in these areas. Taken together, these results suggest that the increase in homicides close to the border documented here are driven by crimes against migrants and have occurred without a corresponding increase in arrests, suggesting that some of these crimes have gone unsolved.  

Working Paper 27620

Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020. 34p.

By Dinu Ostavciuc, Gina Aurora Necula

The Art. in question is dedicated to the specificity of detecting the evidence of an offence and its prosecution, particularly referring to the organised illegal migration, both from the point of view of criminal science and from the point of view of the criminal lawsuit. The subject under investigation here is both practically and legislatively sensitive. The aim of the research is to establish and elucidate the legal interactions, as well as to develop a practical algorithm for law enforcement authorities to detect evidence of organised illegal migration. The study comes with recommendations for law enforcement and prosecution bodies applicable both to the stage of establishing reasonable suspicion of committing the crime of organised illegal migration and to the stage of criminal prosecution initiation. At the same time, we aim at pointing out those features of the initial actions of the law enforcement bodies to which attention should be drawn and the indicated actions should be carried out in order to decide whether or not the conditions of the specified crime are met. The research comes up with findings, recommendations and proposals of lex ferenda, in order to reach the top effectiveness of the organised illegal migration investigation, implicitly that the investigating and prosecuting authorities detect the evidence of organised illegal migration crime within a reasonable extend of time and expeditiously start the prosecution, with respect to the principle of formality of the criminal process.

Fiat Iustitia, Issue Year: 2/2023, 16p.

By Olivier Marie and Paolo Pinotti

In the late 1920s, President Herbert Hoover appointed a National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement to address rising concerns about crime. The Commission dedicated one of its final reports to the issue of “Crime and the Foreign Born,” which begins by noting that “[t]he theory that immigration is responsible for crime . . . is almost as old as the colonies planted by Englishmen on the New England coast” (National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement 1931, p. 23). Almost a century later, concerns about crime remain one of the most frequently expressed reasons for public opposition to immigration in countries around the world. Figure 1 plots the share of respondents in OECD countries worried that “immigrants increase crime” against the share of respondents worried that “immigrants take jobs away from natives,” which is another prominent public opinion concern (for example, Mayda 2006; Haaland and Roth 2020). Most countries lie  well above the 45-degree line, meaning that more people worry about the crime effects of immigration than about its labor market effects. This pattern holds especially for countries with a higher share of migrants over total population, indicated by larger circles. Evidence on the evolution of beliefs concerning immigrants and crime over time can be documented using survey evidence from the United States. For the past 30 years, Gallup has regularly surveyed a representative sample of Americans, asking them to consider various topics and “say whether immigrants to the United States are making the situation in the country better or worse, or not having much effect.” 1 When the topic is “the crime situation,” half or more of the Americans surveyed have answered “worse” in almost every wave. If these views have lately somewhat improved, with 42 percent of respondents choosing “worse” in 2019, this answer was still 18 points higher than the proportion answering that immigrants worsen their job opportunities in the same year. Perhaps surprisingly, economists have only recently begun to investigate the links between immigration and crime in a systematic way. Advances in methodology and data quality during the past few decades have made it possible to go beyond simple correlations and to assess the causal impact of immigration on crime. This evolution has had much in common with the study of the labor market effects of migration depicted in this journal by Peri (2016). In this paper, we first describe recent international trends in immigration and crime, exploring why migrants may at first appear much more criminally active in certain countries. We then discuss the theoretical framework and methodological tools that economists have used in thinking about the relationship between immigration and crime. We assess what these approaches have produced in various contexts as to the causal impact of immigration levels on crime rates. We review the evidence on this point so far, which overwhelmingly suggests that immigrants do not increase crime levels in the communities where they settle, and confirm this overall null-effect conclusion using newly collected international data. Finally, we consider the evidence on the links between access to legal work and the crime propensity of different kinds of immigrants, including refugees and those with irregular legal status. The relatively few papers that have probed this issue all conclude that legal status and work permits strongly decrease the probability that immigrants will become involved in crime.      

Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 38, Number 1—Winter 2024—Pages 181–200 

By Dany Bahar; Meagan Dooley; Andrew Selee

The sudden, large-scale movement of nearly 5.2 million Venezuelans out of their country, most since 2014, with more than 4.2 million of them settling in other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, has raised concerns about how this is affecting receiving communities, with some politicians and pundits claiming that these new arrivals are leading to a rise in crime. Yet few studies have been conducted in the region that examine whether and what type of link may exist between immigration and crime, in part because immigration at this scale is a relatively new phenomenon in most Latin American countries, and this particular mass migration is so recent.1 This issue brief explores data in the three countries with the largest number of Venezuelan migrants and refugees as of 2020—Colombia, Peru, and Chile, which together host more than 2 million Venezuelan nationals—to better understand whether and what sort of relationship exists between this immigration and crime rates. Some of the datasets used are publicly available, while others were obtained by the authors through direct requests to government agencies. For each country, this study analyzes crime data, when possible disaggregated by nationality, and data on the presence of Venezuelans at the subnational level (though the available data do not allow for this to be done in exactly the same way in all three countries). For the most part, analysis of data from 2019 suggests that Venezuelan immigrants commit substantially fewer crimes than the native born, relative to their share in the overall population, signaling that public perceptions on newcomers driving up crime rates are misleading. In Chile, for example, only 0.7 percent of people indicted for crimes in 2019 were Venezuelan nationals, even though Venezuelans made up 2.4 percent of the population. Similarly, in Peru, where this analysis uses imprisonment data as a proxy for crime rates, 1.3 percent of those in prison were foreign born—of any nationality—as of 2019, whereas Venezuelan nationals make up 2.9 percent of the country’s overall population. For the most part, analysis of data from 2019 suggests that Venezuelan immigrants commit substantially fewer crimes than the native born. In Colombia this relationship holds true for violent crimes, as Venezuelan nationals comprised 2.3 percent of arrests for violent crimes in 2019, while they represent 3.2 percent of the population. For crimes overall, however, the picture is more mixed, as 5.4 percent of all arrests were of Venezuelans, a rate higher than their share of the population. Most of these crimes were reported in border regions, perhaps a reflection of the illicit smuggling networks that operate across the Colombian-Venezuelan border. In exploring plausible explanations for crime rates in different parts of the country, it appears that the regions in which Venezuelans were responsible for higher shares of crimes are also those where Venezuelans face higher rates of unemployment. This finding is consistent with the literature that suggests granting migrants and refugees formal labor market access can reduce the incidence of crime among this population. The data in this study provide strong evidence that the presence of Venezuelan immigrants is not leading to increased crime in the region—certainly not in the three countries that have received the largest number of Venezuelan migrants and refugees. Indeed, in most cases they tend to commit a smaller share of crimes than their proportion of the population. Even in the one case where the results are more ambiguous—Colombia—they are more involved in minor crimes and far less involved in major crimes than their population share. These results suggest that fears about Venezuelan newcomers driving up crime are simply misplaced. Sudden mass migration certainly presents challenges to receiving societies, but, at least in this case, a major crime wave is not one of them. 

Washington, DC; Brookings Institute, 2020. 27p.