The Trump administration appears to have deleted a Justice Department web page describing a study that concluded undocumented immigrants in Texas commit notably less crime than U.S. citizens, a finding that contradicts the White House’s frequent descriptions of such migrants as violent criminals.
“Sometime in the last week, the DOJ removed this from its website,” immigration expert David Bier of the Cato Institute wrote on X. “Wonder why?”
The Independent has contacted the Department of Justice for comment.
The National Institute of Justice web page, titled, “Undocumented Immigrant Offending Rate Lower Than U.S.-Born Citizen Rate,” described a study the institute funded in Texas, scrutinizing crime data between 2012 and 2018.
The study, preserved elsewhere in House of Representatives records, found that undocumented people were arrested at half the rate of native-born citizens for violent and drug crimes, and a quarter the rate for property crimes.
It also noted that the undocumented had the lowest offending rates overall for felony and violent felony crime in the border state.
“There is no evidence that the prevalence of undocumented immigrant crime has grown for any category,” the authors wrote.
The finding supports the general research consensus that immigrants commit less crime than U.S. citizens, though attempts at studying this population are confounded by states that don’t note immigration status in arrests.
The Trump administration frequently describes unauthorized migrants as violent, dangerous criminals.
A recent White House statement on Trump’s planned mass deportations notes that the number of “illegal immigrants removed from the country has topped 50,000 as the Trump Administration continues getting illegal immigrant killers, rapists, and drug dealers off our streets.”
In fact, half of those in immigration detention since Trump took office have not been convicted of any crime, according to a New York Times data analysis. (Illegally entering the U.S. on its own is a civil offense.)
Even in places where the administration has painted its efforts as going after the worst of the worst, the reality has fallen short.
As part of court proceedings over the White House’s move to detain deported migrants at the Guantánamo Bay naval station — home to America’s high-value terrorist detainees — the administration disclosed that at one point, nearly one-third of migrant detainees were considered “lower-threat” and likely do not have any serious criminal records.
During the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump frequently tied the record immigration that occurred at the southern border during the Biden years to what he called “Biden migrant crime,” and appeared alongside “angel moms” whose children were killed by migrants.
In recent years, Texas has occupied a boundary-pushing role as an immigration enforcer, in partnership with the federal government. Under Governor Greg Abbott, the state has spent billions using state police and military-style border wall to fight illegal immigration.
