Q&A of the Day – How Many Crimes Committed By Illegal Immigrants Go Unreported?
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
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Today’s Entry: @brianmuddradio Can we really know? We only hear what gets reported. I lived in an area where many were killed or injured by drive by shootings. You rarely would hear it reported on the news. Do you really think the Biden Administration wants such reports to be known.
Bottom Line: Today’s note is in response to my recent story – How Many Crimes Are Committed By Illegal Immigrants? In that story I brought you this: Unsurprisingly what we’ve seen under the Biden Administration is record criminal activity taking place alongside the record numbers of illegal immigrants being allowed into the country by the administration with a significant annual increase in the number of criminal convictions. And it’s important to note that these are only the crimes that resulted in convictions. Criminal convictions of noncitizens are 626% higher since Joe Biden became President of the United States (based on 2023’s reporting), a number that’s still rising in the current year. Every category of crime is also at record levels. Now, today’s question raises a great point. As dramatic as the illegal immigration crime rate has been with unprecedented levels of illegal immigration taking place under the open border policies of the Biden Administration it’s still only what’s reported, or in the case of criminal convictions, those properly prosecuted for crimes committed in this country (aside from their unlawful entry in it). How many crimes committed by illegal immigrants go unreported?
The obvious place to start the analysis is that that we don’t know what we don’t know. If a crime isn’t reported or if it isn’t prosecuted, how could we begin to measure what the real criminal impact of illegal immigrants has been? For that reason, we’ll not be able to pin down a hard number of total crimes committed although there is extensive research available that will be able to help us get close to the real numbers. A 2021 study from the Center for Immigration Studies helped shine light on unreported crimes. The study used data from the Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey, to attempt to line up official crime reporting with surveyed crime victims to see how big of a gap there might be. The answer is that it’s extensive. Based on the Justice’s Department’s data an average of only 38% of all crimes committed – violent and property crimes – are ever reported. As was also noted by the study, there was not a statistically significant difference in the reporting of crimes by victims regardless of one’s immigration status. Using that information in conjunction with the available data on illegal immigrant criminal convictions we can come up with solid estimates on the actual numbers of crimes committed by illegal immigrants.
Let’s revisit the federal governments Criminal Noncitizen Statistics. Here are the number of criminal convictions of “noncitizens” by year starting with the Trump Administration only now we can add in the estimated total number of crimes committed using the victims survey information:
- 2017: 8,531 (reported); 22,000+ (estimated)
- 2018: 6,698 (reported); 17,000+ (estimated)
- 2019: 4,269 (reported); 11,000+ (estimated)
- 2020: 2,438 (reported); 6,000+ (estimated)
Criminal convictions of noncitizens declined by 71% during the Trump Administration. Here are the first 3+ years under the Biden Administration:
- 2021: 10,763 (reported); 28,000+ (estimated)
- 2022: 12,028 (reported); 31,500+ (estimated)
- 2023: 15,267 (reported); 40,000+ (estimated)
- 2024 YTD: 10,337 (reported); 27,000+ (estimated)
This is eye opening information. There already has been over 225% more crimes committed by illegal immigrants under the Biden Administration in under 3.5 years compared to the entire Trump presidency. More eye opening still is this comparison. By the end of the Trump Administration total estimated crimes committed by illegal immigrants totaled about 16 per day, most recently under the Biden Administration we’re up to 110 crimes committed by illegal immigrants per day. Aside from how clearly dangerous the Biden Administration's open border policies have been this also speaks to another dynamic that’s in play. How much more likely illegal immigrants who’ve come into the United States since Biden became president are to commit crimes.
According to the Migration Policy Insititue there were an estimated 11 million+ undocumented people living in the United States in 2020. That’s roughly on par with the estimated number of asylum seekers and gotaways who’ve entered the United States since Joe Biden became president. If those who’ve entered this country committed crimes at the same rate as those already illegally in this country had been committing crimes the under the Trump Administration, we’d have had roughly 12,000 crimes committed by illegal immigrants. Instead, the number was 40,000. What this illustrates is that it’s not just the total number of illegal immigrants who’ve entered this country under the Biden Administration that’s problematic, it’s that they’re also 3.3 times more likely to commit crimes once in the interior compared to the preexisting undocumented population.