Illegal Immigration, Immigration Enforcement Policies, and American Citizens’ Victimization Risk

This project offers the first direct assessment of whether US-born citizens’ risk of victimization is affected by exposure to a growing number of illegal immigrants. The project will also examine different local immigration law enforcement strategies.

The proposed project will integrate estimates of county-level illegal immigrant populations, data on local immigration policies and immigration law enforcement patterns, and a restricted-use version of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The project will also examine whether the presence of selected immigration policies within U.S. communities—the implementation of 287(g) program or a “sanctuary” anti-detainer policy—and the actual immigration enforcement tactics employed impacts US-born citizens’ experience with crime.

Many data sources will be accessed, but four are central to the project: (1) restricted-use data from the NCVS on non-lethal crimes experienced by US-born citizens between 2016-2020; (2) county-level estimates of the percentage of illegal immigrants in the total population and changes in the percentage of illegal immigrants in the total population since 2000; (3) a county-level database that captures the timing of local adoption of immigration law enforcement policies; and (4) county-level data on immigrant detainer issuance, arrests, removals, and local jail confinement of non-citizens. Data and a multiple imputation approach developed by the Co-PI and refined by the Migration Policy Institute will be used to estimate the illegal immigrant population of counties.

"Note: This project contains a research and/or development component, as defined in applicable law," and complies with Part 200 Uniform Requirements - 2 CFR 200.210(a)(14). CA/NCF