Let’s take homicide as an example. The GAO estimates “criminal aliens” were arrested, convicted and incarcerated for 25,064 homicides. If non-citizens committed them over seven years, the annual rate would be 14.2 per 100,000 non-citizens. If illegal aliens committed them over four years, the annual rate would be 58.0 per 100,000 illegal aliens. Either way you compute, those are high rates.
By comparison, the FBI reports the murder rates for the entire U.S. from 2003 through 2009 varied from 5.0 to 5.8 per 100,000 inhabitants for an average rate of 5.5. To be clear, 5.5 is much lower than either 14.2 or 58.0.
Or look at the total number of homicides in those years. Per the FBI, there were 67,642 murders in the U.S. from 2005 through 2008, and 115,717 from 2003 through 2009. Per the GAO, criminal aliens committed 25,064 of them. That means they committed 22% to 37% of all murders in the U.S., while being only 3.52% to 8.25% of the population.
Conclusion: criminal and illegal aliens commit murder at much higher rates than all inhabitants of the U.S. – at least 3 to 10 times higher.
And I believe these are low-end estimates. For one, murder is almost always handled at the state and local level, not the federal level. So the GAO’s homicide data are skewed toward the state and local data, which cover fewer years (four) and a smaller population (illegals only). The Washington Post states that “Federal prisoners made up 10 percent of the total incarcerated populations in the United States in 2013.”
OK, let’s assume that 90% of the crimes listed by the GAO (other than immigration itself) were committed by SCAAP persons in state and local institutions. That would mean illegal aliens committed 22,558 murders over four years. That is a rate of 5,639 per year, or over 15 per day. (For reference, Rep. Steve King reported a figure of 12 per day. A sheriffs’ association is reported to estimate it at 25 per day. I don’t know how reliable these values are, but they are not totally out of line with the GAO’s data.)
That would give a murder rate for illegal aliens of 52 per 100,000 (5,639 in a population of 10.8 million) – about 10 times that of U.S. citizens.
Here are the numbers of crimes per day committed by illegal aliens in just a few crime categories, based on those GAO numbers and the 90% figure for SCAAP persons over four years.
Kidnappings: 9
Murders: 15
Sex offenses: 43
Burglaries: 71
Assaults: 131
(You may try to compare those numbers to the FBI’s numbers for all crimes, but the categories do not match except for murder/homicide. That is part of what makes this analysis so frustrating, and ripe for cherry-picking by pro-immigrant groups.)
Also, the criminal alien numbers came from those arrested, convicted and incarcerated for these crimes, and reported as such via SCAAP. Yet the FBI numbers include all crimes, solved or not, convictions or not. How many illegal aliens committed murder or other crimes in the U.S. without getting caught and convicted of them?
