Immigrants and crime: Crunching the numbers
By
Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN
Updated 10:36 PM ET, Wed July 8, 2015
(CNN)With a presidential election looming, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sparring over immigration in a battle that shows no sign of stopping.
Some are pointing to a recent case -- a woman in San Francisco who was
killed, allegedly by an undocumented immigrant who'd already been deported five times -- as another sign that the U.S. system is in serious need of an overhaul.
But what are the numbers behind the rhetoric?
Here's a look at some of the statistics, where they come from and what people on different sides of the debate say about them.
11.2 million
That's the latest estimate of the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States,
according to the Pew Research Center. And it's less than 4% of the
total U.S. population.
The number peaked in 2007, according to Pew, when there were an estimated 12.2 million unauthorized immigrants in the country. But since 2009, it's "remained essentially unchanged,"
Pew reports, as the numbers of undocumented immigrants entering and leaving the United States "have come into rough balance."
177,960
The number of undocumented immigrants deported last year who were convicted criminals,
according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
That's 56% of last year's total number of deportations, according to ICE, and it's a group that the agency says it's putting first when it comes to deciding which cases to prioritize.
Ask someone like Republican presidential contender Donald Trump about this number and you'll get an earful about how this statistic and others show rampant crime among undocumented immigrants.
Immigrant advocates say that's far from the truth, adding that it's important to look at how the term ICE uses when it talks about convicted criminals -- "
criminal alien" -- is defined.
"Government statistics on who is being removed from the country can be somewhat deceptive," says Walter Ewing, a senior researcher for the American Immigration Council who helped author
a report released this week that argues immigrants are less likely to be criminals than native-born U.S. citizens.
"Immigrants who experience even the slightest brush with the criminal justice system, such as being convicted of a misdemeanor, can find themselves subject to detention for an undetermined period, after which they are expelled from the country and barred from returning," the report says. "In other words, for years the government has been redefining what it means to be a 'criminal alien,' using increasingly stringent definitions and standards of 'criminality' that do not apply to U.S. citizens."
121
The number of people released from immigration custody who were later charged with murder between 2010 and 2014, according to figures from the Department of Homeland Security cited in a recent
letter from two U.S. senators. That's about a thousandth of a percent of the total estimated number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States.
Sen. Jeff Sessions and Sen. Chuck Grassley, both Republicans, have been pointing to this number as they push federal authorities for answers, arguing that "countless innocent Americans every year are the victims of crime perpetrated by deportable criminals."
And the recent San Francisco shooting has added fresh fuel to the debate over whether authorities are doing enough to keep harmful offenders off the streets -- and kick them out of the United States.
But other officials have stressed that it's important to look at the big picture and not to make knee-jerk decisions based on individual cases.
"On the issue of immigration," California Attorney General Kamala Harris said this week, "our policy should not be informed by our collective outrage about one man's conduct."
73,665
The number of inmates in state and federal prisons who are not U.S. citizens,
according to the latest prison population report from the Bureau of Judicial Statistics. That's about 5% of the total prison population.
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