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A Project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center

Issues: immigrant crime

Border Czar Makes Misleading Claim About Immigrants With Criminal Records

Border Czar Makes Misleading Claim About Immigrants With Criminal Records
July 17, 2025

Border Czar Tom Homan has been repeating the misleading claim that there are “over 600,000 illegal aliens with criminal records walking the streets of this nation.” That number includes legal immigrants, not just those who entered the country illegally; about a third of them have only been charged, not convicted; and it’s unclear how many of them have been, or currently are, incarcerated.

Is Illegal Immigration Linked to More or Less Crime?

Is Illegal Immigration Linked to More or Less Crime?
June 27, 2018

President Donald Trump said it’s “not true” that immigrants in the U.S. illegally are “safer than the people that live in the country,” providing several crime statistics he claimed represented the “toll of illegal immigration.” Sen. Bernie Sanders made the opposite claim, saying: “I understand that the crime rate among undocumented people is actually lower than the general population.”