By Alex Nowrasteh  

  Crime committed by illegal immigrants is an important and contentious public policy issue, but it is notoriously difficult to measure and compare their criminal conviction rates with those of other groups such as legal immigrants and native-born Americans. This policy analysis is the latest paper that attempts to resolve those data disputes by relying on detailed crime data from Texas. Over the 10-year period from 2013 to 2022, the homicide conviction rate in Texas for illegal immigrants was 2.2 per 100,000, compared to 3.0 per 100,000 for native-born Americans.  The homicide conviction rate for legal immigrants in Texas was 1.2 per 100,000. Illegal immigrants were 26 percent less likely than native-born Americans to be convicted of homicide, and legal immigrants were 61 percent less likely. Criminal conviction data for crimes other than homicide are included, but readers should interpret them with caution because the quality of the data is suspect. The conviction and arrest rates of illegal and legal immigrants, separately and together, were lower than those of native-born Americans for homicide and all crimes in Texas during the 2013–2022 period 

 Policy Analysis no. 977  

Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2024. 12p.