Are More Migrants Being Arrested for Murder?

Rates of homicides committed by illegal migrants in the United States have increased overall during the Biden administration, though rates at this point in the fiscal year are about average compared with past years dating to 2021.

The hot-button issue of illegal immigration is encompassing the nation and has galvanized Republicans who have consistently kept the topic front and center leading up to November elections. President Joe Biden has allowed an influx of illegal migrants on his watch, most recently drawing condemnation for the February killing of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley allegedly committed by illegal migrant Jose Ibarra.

Republicans have been accused by Democrats of not wanting to solve the issue, instead using the rhetoric to bolster their political base on the campaign trail. In February, Senate Republicans rejected immigration legislation drafted by their own members while House Republicans—including Speaker Mike Johnson—have been adamant against not including immigration-based legislation with foreign aid to countries like Ukraine and Israel.

Homicide rates in mid-March of the past four fiscal years, from 2021 to the present, have totaled three, 22, 10 and 14. All fiscal years annually begin October 1.

To date, there have been 162 total homicides committed by migrants since fiscal year 2017, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data. Between the 2017 and 2020 fiscal years, when Donald Trump was president, there were 11 total homicide or manslaughter crimes documented by CBP.

Total annual numbers shot up in fiscal year 2021, when 60 homicides were reported. It increased to 62 homicides the following fiscal year before dropping to 29 in fiscal year 2023. Between October 1 and the present, there have been 14 homicides.

Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute, has published a research series on illegal-immigrant-related crime. He told Newsweek via phone it is based on data from the Texas Department of Public Safety, which he said keeps the best information of any state.

Nowrasteh has written that the homicide conviction rate for illegal immigrants was 2.4 per 100,000 illegal immigrants in 2015, lower than the homicide conviction rate of 2.8 per 100,000 for native‐​born Americans. Legal immigrants still have the lowest homicide conviction rate at 1.1 per 100,000 legal immigrants, with similar rates across the years for which data are available.

"Illegal immigrants are less likely to commit crimes, especially less homicides than native-born Americans are," he said. "However, some of them do commit serious crimes and we need to focus our immigration resources on targeting those individuals.

"What we do find is that there's no higher crime [in sanctuary cities] than in normal jurisdictions, and we don't see increases in crime when these jurisdictions became sanctuaries. There could be exceptions to that, individual ones."

The gruesome killing of Riley, who was found slain in a wooded area near the University of Georgia last month, led to murder charges against Ibarra, a 26-year-old migrant from Venezuela.

Republicans have blamed the Biden administration for not curbing these incidents amid a flow of approximately 700,000 additional asylum-seekers during the 2023 fiscal year in comparison to the 1.7 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021.

"Laken Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. That's right," Biden said during this month's State of the Union. "But how many thousands of people being killed by legals? To her parents, I say, my heart goes out to you, having lost children myself. I understand."

Alabama Senator Katie Britt, as part of her response to Biden's address on behalf of the Republican Party, focused on illegal immigration in an attempt to contrast both parties' messaging on the issue.

"Just think about Laken Riley," Britt said. "In my neighboring state of Georgia, this beautiful 22-year-old nursing student went out on a jog one morning, but she never got the opportunity to return home. She was brutally murdered by one of the millions of illegal border crossers President Biden chose to release into our homeland."

On February 1, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced the arrests of 171 non-citizens with pending charges or convictions for murder, homicide or assault against children as part of a nationwide law enforcement effort conducted between January 16 and 28.

One of those arrests, of a 32-year-old Mexican living in Denver, Colorado, was related to a murder conviction. That individual reportedly also had two convictions of illegal reentry into the U.S.

The nonpartisan Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) keeps track of illegal migrant-related crimes on its website, acknowledging that serious crime rates still lack among the illegal population when compared to U.S. citizens.

"While it is true that most of the approximately 16.8 million illegal aliens in the U.S. do not commit serious crimes (e.g. murder, rape, or assault), providing those who do with protection provided by sanctuary policies or blanket amnesty can have fatal consequences," FAIR writes. "It is important to remember that a crime committed by an illegal alien is a preventable crime."

Nowrasteh said that individuals who are here illegally and commit crimes should be punished like anyone else, noting how data of individual crimes should be analyzed differently than crime rates of different groups as a whole.

When there are upwards of 12 million to 14 million illegal migrants, he acknowledged that "there's gonna be some criminals in there absolutely, no matter what."

"Just because the trend or on average is that illegal immigrants are less likely [to commit crimes], that doesn't mean that any individual crime they commit is less bad," he said. "That shouldn't be any kind of comfort to the victims. People should be charged regardless of immigration status."

Update 3/18/24, 3:43 p.m. ET: This story was updated with comment from Alex Nowrasteh.