New Research Again Debunks the Myth Linking Undocumented Immigrants to Crime
by
Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
August 28, 2026
An important piece by Ian Kumamoto, published in HuffPost on August 19, 2026, deserves attention: “In A Plot Twist For Conservatives, New Data Finds No Link Between Immigrants And Crime.”
The headline is provocative. The research behind it is serious.
Kumamoto reports on a newly published study in the Journal of Urban Affairs examining the relationship between undocumented immigration and neighborhood crime. The research team studied approximately 11,500 neighborhoods in 100 U.S. cities, encompassing some 46 million people, making this one of the most geographically detailed examinations of the question to date.
And what did researchers find?
No evidence that increases in undocumented immigration produced increases in violent crime.
Indeed, neighborhoods experiencing growth in their undocumented immigrant populations saw greater reductions in property crime. The researchers similarly found no overall significant increase in violent crime associated with increased undocumented immigration.
This matters because the assertion that undocumented immigrants are inherently dangerous has become one of the most politically consequential myths in contemporary American life. Immigrants are repeatedly represented as criminals, invaders, and threats to public safety—with these portrayals then invoked to legitimate increasingly punitive immigration enforcement.
Yet the empirical evidence keeps getting in the way.
The study examined neighborhood-level changes between 2010 and 2018. Its conclusion is remarkably straightforward: “unauthorized immigration does not drive crime rates in U.S. neighborhoods,” as Kubrin summarized the findings.
What is particularly striking is how persistent the immigrant-crime narrative remains despite decades of research challenging it. Kubrin reminds us that nearly a century ago, the Wickersham Commission similarly found lower involvement in crime among immigrants than among the native-born population.
In other words, we are dealing with more than a disagreement over data.
We are confronting the extraordinary durability of a political narrative in which immigrants—particularly Mexican, Central American, and other racialized immigrants—are constructed as sources of social disorder whether or not the evidence supports the claim.
That distinction is important.
Policy grounded in fear rather than evidence is bad policy. And when fear is racialized and directed toward populations possessing limited political power, it can also become profoundly dangerous.
The Kumamoto piece is therefore worth reading, as is the underlying research. At a minimum, debates over immigration enforcement should begin with what the evidence actually tells us—not with a stereotype repeated often enough that it begins to masquerade as fact.
Source: Ian Kumamoto, “In A Plot Twist For Conservatives, New Data Finds No Link Between Immigrants And Crime,” HuffPost, August 19, 2026. The underlying study, “Does Unauthorized Immigration Drive Community Crime Rates? Evidence from 11,500 U.S. Neighborhoods,” was published in the Journal of Urban Affairs on August 10, 2026.
References
Kumamoto, I. (2026, August 19). In a plot twist for conservatives, new data finds no link between immigrants and crime. HuffPost.
Kubrin, C. E., Christopher, D., Hodgen, C., Luo, X. I., & Hipp, J. R. (2026). Does unauthorized immigration drive community crime rates? Evidence from 11,500 U.S. neighborhoods. Journal of Urban Affairs. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2026.2699123
In A Plot Twist For Conservatives, New Data Finds No Link Between Immigrants And Crime
Awkward.
Ryan Murphy via Associated Press
By Ian Kumamoto
Aug 19, 2026, 02:18 PM EDT
|Updated Aug 19, 2026
While undocumented immigrants continue to serve as conservatives’ favorite boogiemen, they also conveniently happen to be a demographic with few legal protections. By painting them as dangerous criminals threatening the safety of American citizens, many Republicans have justified violent campaigns that have involved arresting and detaining thousands of innocent people, some of them with legal status, all across the country.
But an affirming new study found no detectable change in violent crime in neighborhoods with increases in undocumented residents. In fact, “neighborhoods where the share of undocumented immigrants actually grew saw greater reductions in property crime,” per the research published in the Journal of Urban Affairs.
The study tracked crime rates across a vast 11,500 neighborhoods and across 100 cities that represented 46 million people. Their findings joyfully and completely fly in the face of all of conservatives’ racist and xenophobic claims about immigrants — especially those who are undocumented — being the scourge of their communities.
In order to come to their conclusions, researchers examined correlations between the number of undocumented immigrants and different types of crimes, such as property crime and aggravated assaults. Although there are several studies published that examine the connections between immigration and crime, few differentiate among immigrants with legal status and undocumented immigrants. One of the most fascinating findings from this particular study was that neighborhoods that saw a growth in the percentage of undocumented immigrants also saw a 2.5% decrease in aggravated assaults and other violent crime.
For those of us who are immigrants or have spent time around undocumented people, this is actually not very surprising. People who leave their home countries often do so out of desperation, often to flee violence, poverty and other factors that dramatically affect their quality of life. The last thing many of them want to do once they reach the U.S. is call attention to themselves by breaking the rules.
One of the most fascinating findings from this particular study was that neighborhoods that saw a growth in the percentage of undocumented immigrants also saw a 2.5% decrease in aggravated assaults and other violent crime.
This fear of being perceived negatively is even more pronounced now that ICE has been unleashed indiscriminately nationwide, which has left many immigrants literally too afraid to even step outside. That fear seems pretty justified, considering several cases of unjustified violence and a new plan to arm ICE officers with electric shock gloves.
The correlation between reduced violent crime in areas with an increasing number of undocumented immigrants is so notable that the researchers even make a spicy suggestion at the end of their study: “All else equal, our findings suggest that law enforcement activity to prevent property crime and violent assaults would be optimally concentrated in neighborhoods where residents are disproportionately U.S. citizens,” they write.
Of course, we’re not really holding our breaths for these very insightful, revealing studies to lead to a change of heart on the part of cowardly bigots. The vitriol against undocumented immigrants is already so widespread and has become more of an emotional reaction than it is a logical or scientifically backed one.
But for everyone else who recognizes data, respects human rights and understands the pitfalls of historical racism, it’s evident that blaming violence on outsiders seeking asylum is ignorant and uninformed.
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