Large-scale study finds no link between crime and unauthorized immigration

Irvine, Calif., Aug. 11, 2026 - For more than two decades, Charis E. Kubrin has followed the data wherever it leads. As UC Irvine Chancellor's Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, she has built a career studying one of America's most politically charged questions: does immigration drive crime?

Now, in one of the most geographically detailed studies of its kind ever conducted, Kubrin and colleagues have an answer.

"Consistent with the research base more generally, unauthorized immigration does not drive crime rates in U.S. neighborhoods," said Kubrin, the study's lead author. "Honestly, I wasn't too surprised."

Co-authored with Derek Christopher of Stanford University, Cheyenne Hodgen of UC Irvine, Xiaoshuang Iris Luo of the University of Akron, and John Hipp of UC Irvine, theirs is the first study to examine the unauthorized immigration-crime relationship at the neighborhood level on such a sweeping national scale. Their research, published today in the Journal of Urban Affairs, tracked crime trends across 11,500 neighborhoods - representing 46 million residents - in diverse U.S. cities between 2010 and 2018.

What they found: neighborhoods where the share of undocumented residents grew actually saw greater reductions in property crime and no significant change in violent crime, contrary to what many claim.

The gap between what researchers know and what the public believes is nothing new, Kubrin notes.

"Nearly 100 years ago, the Wickersham Commission published a report showing that involvement in crime is lower among immigrants than the native born," she says, "a finding that made its way onto the front page of the New York Times in an article titled, 'Wickersham Board Frees Foreign-Born of Big Crime Blame.' That title says it all."

To estimate the undocumented population at the neighborhood level, the research team accessed restricted individual-level Census data through a federal Research Data Center and then applied an imputation method similar to those used by the Department of Homeland Security.

Here is where they relied upon the expertise of Christopher, who received his training at UC Irvine, earning an economics Ph.D. in 2022 before joining Stanford.

Christopher is one of few academic researchers to have published work leveraging such a method.

"Different versions of these methods have been around for decades. How else would anyone be able to know roughly how many undocumented people are in the United States?," he said. "At UC Irvine, I encountered a paper with an adaptation of the methods that I found credible and wondered, 'why aren't more researchers using this?' So, I reproduced this method and adapted it for a different dataset to address other unanswered questions about the role of undocumented status. But our study, to my knowledge, is the first to apply these methods to the rich data that only exists in the RDC."

Previous research examined the unauthorized immigration-crime link only at the state and metropolitan-area levels, the researchers say.

"While previous studies are clear about the broader relationship between immigration and crime, say, for city crime rates, none has really adequately addressed the concern I still hear along the lines of, 'but should I be worried about illegal immigration in my neighborhood, specifically?' " Christopher said. "I'm an economist by training, but part of the reason I love working in criminology is that when we provide answers to real concerns like these, we're not just helping the general public understand, we're also helping law enforcement understand where to target their efforts to be most effective."

One study finding required closer examination.

While property crime fell and aggravated assaults declined significantly in neighborhoods with growing undocumented populations, robberies went up.

Does that mean undocumented immigrants are committing more crimes?

The research team says the evidence points in the opposite direction - toward victimization, not perpetration.

"An increase in robberies, despite decreases in all other crime categories, would be consistent with the idea that undocumented immigrants are disproportionately likely to be targets of robbery given greater involvement in the cash economy," Hipp said.

Because many undocumented individuals lack access to bank accounts and formal financial services, they are more likely to carry cash, making them attractive targets, Hipp notes. Fear of deportation also makes them reluctant to report crimes to police, leaving them more vulnerable. Researchers call it the "Walking ATM" phenomenon, and prior neighborhood-level studies have found consistent evidence for it.

The study cannot definitively confirm the victimization explanation since the data don't identify the immigration status of crime victims, but the pattern across all other crime categories makes it the most plausible interpretation, according to the researchers.

Findings from the study raise questions about the effectiveness of current immigration policies.

The federal government is spending billions on immigration enforcement, citing public safety as the primary justification. Kubrin says there is little evidence to back up that claim.

"It's well beyond time to rethink immigration enforcement in this country," she said. "These policies are largely ineffective at enhancing public safety and may actually do more harm than good."

Enforcement policies, she argues, are built on a flawed premise of widespread immigrant criminality. Beyond that, she says:

• they tend in practice to target low-level offenders rather than serious criminals;
• they damage trust between immigrant communities and police, making residents less likely to report crime or victimization; and
• they carry profound human costs, including the psychological trauma experienced by U.S.-born children whose parents are deported.

Beyond the crime statistics lies a broader social and economic toll. The team points to a study led by T. William Lester, UC Irvine associate professor of urban planning and public policy, which found that Orange County businesses lost nearly $59 million in economic output over just eight weeks following intensified federal immigration enforcement.

"With policies like these, no one wins," Kubrin said.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UC Irvine is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is ranked among the nation's top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. The campus has produced five Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UC Irvine has more than 36,000 students and offers 224 degree programs. It's located in one of the world's safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County's second-largest employer, contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide. For more on UC Irvine, visit www.uci.edu.