The Washington Post Grossly Understates the Crime Rate of Illegal Immigrants

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APA
Agresti, J. D. (2019, April 4). The Washington Post Grossly Understates the Crime Rate of Illegal Immigrants. Retrieved from https://www.justfactsdaily.com/the-washington-post-grossly-understates-the-crime-rate-of-illegal-immigrants
MLA
Agresti, James D. “The Washington Post Grossly Understates the Crime Rate of Illegal Immigrants.” Just Facts. 4 April 2019. Web. 28 March 2024.<https://www.justfactsdaily.com/the-washington-post-grossly-understates-the-crime-rate-of-illegal-immigrants>.
Chicago (for footnotes)
James D. Agresti, “The Washington Post Grossly Understates the Crime Rate of Illegal Immigrants.” Just Facts. April 4, 2019. https://www.justfactsdaily.com/the-washington-post-grossly-understates-the-crime-rate-of-illegal-immigrants.
Chicago (for bibliographies)
Agresti, James D. “The Washington Post Grossly Understates the Crime Rate of Illegal Immigrants.” Just Facts. April 4, 2019. https://www.justfactsdaily.com/the-washington-post-grossly-understates-the-crime-rate-of-illegal-immigrants.

By James D. Agresti
April 4, 2019

The Washington Post has published a blatant falsehood in support of the claim that illegal immigrants are less likely to commit serious imprisonable crimes than people born in the United States. Furthermore, the Post ignores data from the Census Bureau, Department of Justice, and Homeland Security that proves the polar opposite is true. These straightforward, comprehensive facts reveal that illegal immigrants are much more likely to commit such crimes.

A Innocent Mistake or Deliberate Deception?

In a recent “fact check“ of President Trump, Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly of the Post contend that Trump “exaggerates the link between immigration and crime.” As proof of this, they write that “almost all research shows legal and illegal immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native-born population.”

The hyperlink above leads to their supposed evidence, an earlier article by Rizzo that makes a simple but major error. It compares the number of non-citizen immigrants in prison to the total number of immigrants in the United States. This is misleading because non-citizens only account for about half of all immigrants. The other half are immigrants who have become U.S. citizens.

The Post’s mix-up, quoted below, misleadingly compares a subset of immigrants to the larger population of all immigrants:

Excluding five states that did not provide data, state and federal correctional facilities in 2016 housed 1.3 million prisoners, of which 83,556, or 6 percent, were noncitizens, according to the latest BJS [Bureau of Justice Statistics] report. The total immigrant population stood at 43.7 million in 2016, or 13.5 percent, according to Census data.

A comparison of these figures shows that noncitizens are … far below their share of the population when combining both state and federal prisons (6 percent).

According to the Census Bureau’s “Fact Finder”—the same source the Post uses to obtain population data for all immigrants—22.5 million non-citizens lived in the U.S. during 2016, or 7.0% of the U.S. population. This is close to the 6% share of the prison population comprised of non-citizens. It is not “far below” it as the Post claims.

That one percentage point difference evaporates in light of the fact that the BJS report cited by the Post says that “some states likely provided undercounts” of non-citizen prisoners. As the Congressional Research Service reported in 2016: “Until recently, the proportion of noncitizens incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails corresponded closely to that of noncitizens in the U.S. population, but unreported incarceration data since 2013 has hindered such comparisons.”

It’s possible this is just an innocent mistake by the Post, but Just Facts alerted the paper’s head “fact checker” and its corrections editor to this falsehood on February 8, 2019. Nearly two months later, the article has not been fixed. Moreover, if the Post corrected this, it would completely undermine the narrative of its fact check.

The Rest of the Story

The Post’s “Standards and Ethics“ declare that “no story is fair if it omits facts of major importance or significance.” Yet, its fact check does this four times—and in every case—the omission downplays the crime rates of illegal immigrants.

First, the Post omits the fact that the incarceration rate of non-citizens drastically understates their criminality. This is because the U.S. deports masses of non-citizen criminal convicts every year, thus reducing the number who remain in the country. In the decade from 2006–2015, the U.S. deported an average of 150,000 non-citizens per year who were convicted of committing crimes in the United States. This is about equal to the 145,896 non-citizens in adult correctional facilities in 2016. Since most criminals are repeat offenders, this continual mass deportation of non-citizen criminals means that the crime rate of non-citizens who come to the U.S. is much higher than those who remain in the U.S.

Put another way, if the U.S. deported the same number of criminals as its entire prison population every year for a decade, the nation’s crime rate would plummet. This is exactly what it does with non-citizens, and yet, their incarceration rate is about the same as the general U.S. population.

Second, the Post omits the fact that the incarceration rate of illegal immigrants is much higher than that of non-citizens. This is because roughly half of all non-citizens are legal immigrants who must pass a criminal background check in order to immigrate. Hence, these are a select pool of law-abiding people. The federal government doesn’t isolate the incarceration rate of legal non-citizens, but the incarceration rate of immigrant citizens, who must pass a full FBI background check, is 79% lower than the general U.S. population. Mixing legal and illegal non-citizens into a single incarceration rate causes the low crime rates of legal immigrants to obscure the high crime rates of illegal immigrants. Near the end of its fact check, the Post quotes the author of a study who raises this point, but the Post dismisses the study as “an outlier.”

Third, the Post omits the fact that illegal immigrants are more likely than the general population to get away with highly violent crimes like murder. Thus, their relative incarceration rate does not accurately reflect their criminality. This is because illegal immigrants are primarily from Latin America, and murders committed by racial minorities in the U.S. are less likely to be solved. In the minority-dominated sanctuary city of Chicago, for example, the portion of murders that resulted in a suspect being identified and acted upon by the criminal justice system was 17% in 2017, as compared to the nationwide average of 59%.

Fourth, the Post omits the fact that data from the Social Security Administration, IRS, and Government Accountability Office show that most illegal immigrants engage in identity fraud and/or tax evasion. These are federal felonies punishable by up to five years in prison. As California Senate Leader and Democrat Kevin De Leon admitted in 2017, “anyone who has family members who are undocumented knows that almost entirely everybody has secured some sort of false identification.”

Summary

By using a patent falsehood and disregarding key facts, the Post paints a picture of illegal immigration and crime that is diametrically opposed to reality. Other media outlets have published articles that suffer from similar flaws. These include but are not limited to:

In stark contrast to these sketchy studies, straightforward facts from credible primary sources prove that illegal immigrants are much more likely to commit serious, imprisonable crimes than the general U.S. population.

  • April 4, 2019 at 3:28 PM
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    Did Just Facts bring this article to the attention of the Washington Post? If so, what was their response? If not why not?

    Reply
    • April 4, 2019 at 4:11 PM
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      “It’s possible this is just an innocent mistake by the Post, but Just Facts alerted the paper’s head “fact checker” and its corrections editor to this falsehood on February 8, 2019. Nearly two months later, the article has not been fixed. Moreover, if the Post corrected this, it would completely undermine the narrative of its fact check.”

      Reply
  • April 4, 2019 at 3:36 PM
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    What article in WaPo is being discussed? No reference or link is given.

    Reply
    • April 12, 2019 at 9:30 AM
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      A link to the Washington Post article was given at the outset of the second paragraph: In a recent “fact check” of President Trump

      Reply
  • April 4, 2019 at 8:28 PM
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    It is truly a shame when supposedly reputable, objective newspapers and their reporters intentionally skew facts to fit their pre-determined agenda. A huge thank you to Just Facts for being a light of truth. Keep up the good work.

    Reply
    • April 4, 2019 at 10:49 PM
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      Thank you for your kind words, Luis.

      Reply
    • July 30, 2019 at 2:08 AM
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      Actually, I regard The Washington Post and The New York as I regard The View: totally irrelevant. High emotion and skewed facts are NOT what we are thirsty for when trying to sort out the facts of serious events. Thank you Just Facts for clearing up muddy waters. You are much appreciated.

      Reply
  • April 5, 2019 at 12:11 AM
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    Less likely to commit “serious imprisonable” crimes… what happen to just committing crimes. That statement alone, is a red flag. This way they don’t have to include crimes such as document theft. Did the Post contact the United States Sentencing Commission? And what segment of American born citizens are being use? Thank you Just Facts.

    Reply
  • April 5, 2019 at 9:33 AM
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    I posted your research on my FB page and a friend responded with this:
    Joel Preuninger
    Joel Preuninger Prisoner counts are always problematic.

    Light and Miller (2017) compared estimates of the undocumented immigrant population and violent crime rates (homicides, robberies, aggravated assaults and rape) for all 50 states and Washington, D.C., from 1990 through 2014, resulting in 1,209 datapoints to analyze.

    They found the relationship between undocumented immigration and violent crime is negative–meaning states with more undocumented immigrants had lower levels of violent crime–when controlling for other variables such as lawful immigration, age structure, urbanization, structural disadvantage, unemployment, manufacturing and managerial employment, gun availability, drugs, incarceration, and police per capita.

    This chart shows the strong negative relationship:

    https://wol-prod-cdn.literatumonline.com/…/crim12175…

    The results provide strong evidence that the presence of undocumented immigration does not increase violent crime and suggests that undocumented immigrants are themselves less likely to commit violent crime, which is consistent with the general understanding that most undocumented immigrants, like immigrants in general, come to the US to make a better life for themselves.

    Light, Michael T., and Ty Miller. “Does undocumented immigration increase violent crime?.” Criminology 56, no. 2 (2018): 370-401. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/…/10.1111/1745-9125.12175

    Reply
    • April 5, 2019 at 10:13 AM
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      This study doesn’t provide any evidence that illegal immigrants are less likely to commit violent crime, much less “strong evidence.” This is because it suffers from four major flaws:

      1) It determines association, which is not the same as causation.

      2) It cherry picks an unrepresentative timeframe.

      3) It has an absurdly low signal-to-noise ratio. In other words, it claims to measure the criminality of illegal immigrants, who are a single-digit portion of the U.S. population, by measuring the crime rates of entire populations.

      4) It uses a bait-and-switch tactic. This is done by “controlling” for factors like “urbanization, structural disadvantage, unemployment,” which has the effect of comparing illegal immigrants to the most crime-prone segments of the U.S. population.

      The media often trumpets such junk science, and Just Facts has debunked this study and other similar ones here:

      https://www.justfactsdaily.com/illegal-immigrants-far-more-likely-to-commit-serious-crimes-than-us-public/

      and here: https://www.justfacts.com/immigration.asp#crime_media

      Reply
      • April 5, 2019 at 12:17 PM
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        Thank you James! I posted your reply on my FB page and so far it’s “crickets…”

        Reply
  • July 14, 2019 at 8:52 PM
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    They are not illegal immigrants, they are illegal alien invaders. And that’s an actual fact.

    Reply
  • November 19, 2019 at 6:46 AM
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    Hi,

    One question about your data on immigrants. You said the following:

    “According to the Census Bureau’s “Fact Finder”—the same source the Post uses to obtain population data for all immigrants—22.5 million non-citizens lived in the U.S. during 2016, or 7.0% of the U.S. population. This is close to the 6% share of the prison population comprised of non-citizens. It is not “far below” it as the Post claims.”

    But the data you provide (see your link) is not data on all immigrants. It is data on non-citizens.

    Data on all immigrants should include US citizens by naturalization (this data is also provided in your link).

    All immigrants = non-citizens + US citizens by naturalization.

    If you do this and you look at the link you provided, you will see that the 43 millions as indicated by the Washington Post as the total of all immigrants is correct.

    Please check.

    Reply
    • November 19, 2019 at 6:52 PM
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      The problem with the Post’s analysis is that it compares the figure of 43.7 million immigrants living in the U.S. to the number of non-citizens in correctional facilities. An accurate analysis requires comparing the number of non-citizens living in the U.S. to the number of non-citizens in correctional facilities. That’s exactly what this article does.

      Reply

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