Justice: 64% of federal arrests are noncitizens, a 234% increase over 20 years

NightHawkeye

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Justice: 64% of federal arrests are noncitizens, a 234% increase over 20 years

The newly released statistics feed the Trump administration’s narrative that an increase in immigration, especially illegal immigration, has fed a spike in crime.
...
Justice was very pointed in comparing U.S. citizens arrested to noncitizens. For example, it noted that while they make up just 7% of the U.S. population, noncitizens account for 15% of the arrests by federal authorities, 24% of drug arrests, 25% of federal property arrests, including 28% of all federal fraud arrests
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Occams Barber

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Justice: 64% of federal arrests are noncitizens, a 234% increase over 20 years

The newly released statistics feed the Trump administration’s narrative that an increase in immigration, especially illegal immigration, has fed a spike in crime.
...
Justice was very pointed in comparing U.S. citizens arrested to noncitizens. For example, it noted that while they make up just 7% of the U.S. population, noncitizens account for 15% of the arrests by federal authorities, 24% of drug arrests, 25% of federal property arrests, including 28% of all federal fraud arrests
.​
The Justice Department data refers only to Federal crimes. Federal crime represents around 3% of the annual US crime caseload.

A recently published report by the Cato Institute looked at state crime in Texas. Texas is the only state that records criminal convictions and arrests by immigration status.

This graphic, from the report, clearly shows that the state crime rate for both legal and illegal immigrants is well below that of native born Americans.

upload_2019-8-23_7-53-45.png

OB
 
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RocksInMyHead

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I'm confused as to where the 64% is coming from, because the quote in the article says that 15% of federal arrests are non-citizens. Unless that doesn't include immigration-related arrests and the 64% does? If so, surprise, surprise - immigration-related arrests tend to be non-citizens. Go figure.

Since the article doesn't appear to include a link to the data they're reporting on, it's difficult to analyze.
 
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Occams Barber

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keith99

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It is also arrests, not convictions. One could just as easily conclude that the Trump administration is targeting non-citizens.

BTW the 15% of all arrests, the 24% of drug arrests and the 25% of property arrests happens to add up to 64%, but anyone with an elementary school education knows that is not how it works.

Reading the linked opinion piece it looks like coming up with 64% is something done by the writer, not the justice department. A refreshing change, usually the chief idiot is in the Trump administration.
 
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RocksInMyHead

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In the interest of full information this is a link to the original Dept of Justice release.

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/icfjs9818.pdf

It's worth repeating that Federal crime represents only 3% of the US crime caseload. 97% of crime is a state issue. In other words, Federal crime is statistically trivial when looking at overall crime rates.
OB
Ok, looks like I was correct. 15% of non-immigration federal arrests, 64% of all federal arrests. Which makes a lot more sense. Of note: the Border Patrol nearly doubled its arrest rate (in relation to apprehensions) from 2017 to 2018. In 2017, they arrested 12 of every 100 people they apprehended. In 2018, that jumped to 21 of every 100. DEA has also stepped up enforcement at the border - 25% of their total drug arrests in 2018 were in border sectors. That's a good thing, I'd say, and would help explain the discrepancy in the arrest rate for non-immigration crimes relative to the illegal population.
 
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NightHawkeye

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Reading the linked opinion piece it looks like coming up with 64% is something done by the writer, not the justice department. A refreshing change, usually the chief idiot is in the Trump administration.
Incorrect.

Figure 1 in the DOJ report shows the 64%. An observant reader will note it is highlighted in red.
A poster wishes more people understood statistics.
A poster wishes more people would actually read the report.
 
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