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Activists’ claims that illegal aliens commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans do may appear convincing — but new data from New York shows those here illegally commit crime at a rate much higher than their share of the state’s population.
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It’s true that if you lump all immigrants together, relatively few of them are accused and convicted of crimes committed here in the United States.
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Legal immigrants commit crime at very low rates, so combining their crime data with that of illegal immigrants masks the latter’s higher criminal activity.
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Now, fresh data from the Department of Homeland Security offers a fresh look at this question.
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As The Post has reported, the department claims that 7,113 of those currently incarcerated in New York state prisons and jails are illegal immigrants.
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They’ve been convicted of committing 148 homicides, 717 assaults, 134 burglaries, 106 robberies, 235 dangerous drugs offenses, 152 weapons offenses and 260 sexual predatory offenses, among other crimes.
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What’s more, New York’s failure to honor US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers has resulted in the release of 6,947 criminal illegal aliens since January 20th.
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The DHS data gives us a handy metric to calculate relative rates of criminality.
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Altogether, roughly 50,803 people are incarcerated in New York’s prison and jail systems: about 32,469 in the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision and another 18,334 in the state’s city and county jails.
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The 7,113 illegal aliens currently incarcerated thus make up 14.0% of New York’s total inmate population — and because the state doesn’t actively identify immigration status, this share is likely an underestimate.
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Another confounding factor: Immigration authorities often deport undocumented immigrants directly from prison before they finish their sentences.
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In early 2025, for example, nationally about half of the individuals ICE highlighted in enforcement actions were already incarcerated at the time of their arrest.
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This practice skews crime data by underrepresenting illegal aliens in prison population statistics since some of them get removed early from prison. Some criminal illegals are even deported after arrest or conviction, never entering prison.
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As well, there’s New York’s Protect Our Courts Act, which aims to keep ICE from picking up illegal immigrants inside or immediately around New York state courthouses when they are being arraigned on charges.
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In New York City alone, however, ICE has made about 460 arrests from mid-May through July this year that “likely took place on the same day as a court hearing,” per CBS News.
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But assume the DHS data is correct, and illegals make up 14.0% of incarcerated individuals in New York.
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New York is estimated to have between 676,000 to 825,000 illegal aliens out of a total state population of 19.99 million — meaning illegal immigrants make up only 3.4% to 4.15% of the state’s population.
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And that means they are overrepresented in the state’s prisons and jails by at least 3.4 times.
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And even if the population estimate undercounts the number of illegal aliens in New York, and the true number present is two to three times higher, illegal aliens would still be massively overrepresented among New York’s convicted and accused criminals.
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Housing those 7,113 illegals in prisons and jails is costly.
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While in the average costs differ across various facilities, assuming half of incarcerated illegals are in state prison and half of the remainder are in New York City jails implies a cost of well over $1 billion per year, and possibly as much as $1.4 billion.
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Other data, too, links illegal immigrants to crime.
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Last year, the Biden administration admitted that 9% of the 7.4 million “non-detained” illegal immigrants it had tallied — 662,566 people — already had criminal records, even though the vast majority had voluntarily turned themselves in at the border and were the least likely to be criminals.
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This figure even excludes the 2 million known “gotaways” who crossed the border without being caught and the unknown millions who evaded detection — and it likely understates criminal histories, since countries like Venezuela often refuse to share background information.
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So it’s hardly surprising that violent crime surged by a record 59% during Biden’s four years in office — the largest percentage increase ever, over any four-year period — at the same time the United States experienced an unprecedented influx of illegal aliens.
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As Trump deports criminal illegal immigrants and deters others from attracting police attention, the U.S. is on track for the lowest murder rate ever recorded.
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The evidence from New York makes clear that illegal immigrants are committing crimes at far higher rates than their share of the population. Taking federal data, state prison figures, and real-world enforcement outcomes into account, the left’s “low-crime” narrative simply collapses.
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