Federal arrests of noncitizens triple over 20 years

A report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that arrests of non-U.S. citizens have more than tripled over the last two decades, mostly driven by increases in immigration enforcement.

More specifially, the report shows that 64 percent of all federal arrests last year were of non-U.S. citizens, up from 37 percent in 1998. “In 2018, 85% of federal arrests of non-U.S. citizens were for immigration offenses, and another 5% of arrests were immigration-related.”

While Trump administrative policies are certainly part of the story, the report’s findings show those increases are attributable to enhanced immigration enforcement in the later years of President George W. Bush’s administration and throughout the Obama administration as well.

In the release of the report, the Department of Justice touted the report in a press release this week from the Office of Justice Programs, focusing on the growth in federal arrests of foreign nationals. “While non-U.S. citizens make up 7% of the U.S. population (per the U.S. Census Bureau for 2017), they accounted for 15% of all federal arrests and 15% of prosecutions in U.S. district court for non-immigration crimes in 2018. Non-U.S. citizens accounted for 24% of all federal drug arrests and 25% of all federal property arrests, including 28% of all federal fraud arrests,” the Justice Department said in a statement.

Critics point out that this framing of the report is misleading. Alex Nowrastehm a researcher for the libertarian Cato Institute said, “It’s a press release with the most dramatic statistics displayed without context, nuance, or explanation — not a serious data analysis. The federal government enforces immigration laws so it makes sense that most arrests are of non-citizens.” The Trump administration has pushed forward several initiatives to combat immigrant crime, although statistics show immigrants — both documented and undocumented — are less likely to commit crime than the general population. In an analysis of American Community Survey information, Cato found that undocumented immigrants are about half as likely to be incarcerated than the general population, and documented immigrants about half as likely to be incarcerated as undocumented immigrants.

MHC