Can Heightened Immigration Enforcement Increase Crime?

The Issue:

President Trump ran on the promise to conduct “the largest deportation program in American history.” A stated objective of increasing the arrest and removal of undocumented immigrants is to detain and deport individuals with criminal records who pose a threat to public safety. Immigration enforcement policies that target immigrants with criminal records are often touted as a means of reducing crime, both by incapacitating deported offenders and deterring future criminal activity. But, an increased focus on deportations could also reduce police effectiveness if victims of crime become less likely to report incidents to the police out of fear that they or their loved ones could be deported. When crime reporting declines, police are less able to identify, prevent, and solve crimes when they occur, making it harder to apprehend offenders. As a result, offenders may perceive a decreased risk of apprehension and could actually increase their criminal activity. New research on a program which led to a large increase in deportations in the U.S. offers an opportunity to study the impact of increased deportations on people’s willingness to report crimes and the incidence of crime.

When victims decrease their engagement with law enforcement, police can become less effective at catching offenders and this can increase crime.

The Facts:

• Civilian participation is a key component of law enforcement. Without victims and witnesses reporting crimes to the police, enforcement policy can become less effective, and public safety may worsen. At the same time, the willingness to report crimes may itself be influenced by the broader enforcement environment. Residents may be less likely to engage with the police when they perceive enforcement to be disproportionate or unfair.  For example, police use of force against civilians could engender fear among community members related to interacting with law enforcement. There is evidence that exposure to police-involved shootings reduce civilian crime reports to police and that high-profile acts of police violence erode community engagement. In the setting of domestic violence, where victims have close relationships to offenders, victim reporting can be particularly responsive to changes in policing and enforcement practices. For instance, laws that require police to arrest abusers when a domestic incident is reported seem to have the unintended consequence of increasing intimate partner homicide, potentially because victims are less likely to contact the police. 
• The Secure Communities program is a federal policy that expanded the involvement of local authorities in immigration enforcement, significantly increasing deportations of undocumented immigrants. Secure Communities (SC) permitted the rapid detection of likely undocumented individuals booked into jail by automatically forwarding fingerprints of all arrestees to the Department of Homeland Security. This automatic sharing of information makes it possible to check the immigration status of every person arrested by local authorities in the United States. A “detainer” request (i.e., an immigration hold) asking local officials to keep the individual in their custody can then be issued for those found to be subject to deportation until they can be transferred to federal custody. The program was rolled out piecemeal at the county-level between 2008-2013. It was temporarily suspended by a policy change between November 2014 and January 2017. The number of immigrant detentions and deportations rose quickly nationwide following the launch of the program. We estimate that the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers that resulted in a transfer to ICE custody doubled between 2008 and 2012. Secure Communities was responsible for the deportation of over 400,000 individuals between 2008 and 2014. Over 90% of detainers and removals were for individuals of Hispanic ethnicity.
• Impacts of the Secure Communities program went beyond those directly affected. In addition to direct effects on immigrants detained and deported, Secure Communities had broader “chilling effects” due to fear induced by the policy. For instance, studies have found Secure Communities reduced participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and in the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program of qualifying Hispanic-headed citizen households. The onset of Secure Communities has also been linked to reduced workplace safety complaints to government regulators and increased injuries at workplaces with Hispanic workers. 
• To determine the impact of the increased deportation program on public safety we compare outcomes in counties that implemented the program earlier versus those that implemented the program later. We look at crime reporting behavior separately from changes in victimization to accurately detect the full impact of Secure Communities on public safety. We use a restricted version of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), a nationally representative survey of approximately 240,000 persons each year maintained by the U.S. Census, which asks respondents whether they have been the victim of a crime and, if so, whether they reported this crime to police. Unlike administrative police data sets which can only measure crimes reported to police, this survey has the advantage of being able to track all victimizations, whether or not the victim chose to report the crime. The NCVS also includes the ethnicity of respondents, allowing us to separately estimate effects for Hispanics.
• We find that Secure Communities reduced the likelihood that Hispanic victims reported crime to the police. After the Secure Communities program went into effect in a county, Hispanics were 30 percent less likely to report criminal incidents to the police. Hispanics reduced their reporting rate by 9 percentage points, a significant and sizable decline relative to the pre-period reporting rate of 33 percent. The decline occurred relatively quickly and appears more pronounced among property offenses. In contrast, we find no changes in the reporting behavior of non-Hispanics (see chart).
• At the same time, the policy increased crime against Hispanics. Hispanic victimization (i.e., offending against Hispanics) increased by 16% relative to the pre-period monthly victimization rate (see chart). These estimates imply that Secure Communities resulted in 1.3 million additional crimes against Hispanic victims in the two years following program activation. The increase in victimization appears to be largely concentrated among property crimes, such as burglary and theft, which comprise the majority of victimizations. There is no change in the overall victimization of non-Hispanic individuals before and after the implementation of Secure Communities. There is, however, an increase in the victimization of non-Hispanics who live in areas with a high share of Hispanic residents. Overall, we can rule out that the policy led to improvements in public safety for the broader population.
• Our results indicate that reduced willingness to report crimes to the police leads to an increase in crime. Because police rely on victim reporting to apprehend offenders, a decline in reporting implies a substantially lower likelihood that offenders are caught after committing a crime. Counties with larger declines in reporting rates experienced larger increases in victimization rates, establishing a clear link between the outcomes. We rule out that changes in economic conditions and demographic composition are the key drivers of the increase in crime. Because the increase in victimization is mirrored by a decline in crime reporting, reported crime rates do not change after the launch of the program. This finding is consistent with previous studies that have not found Secure Communities to have any measurable impact on trends in official crime reports (see here, here and here).