Why Are There So Many Immigrants in Federal Prison?
Critics of immigrants—particularly undocumented immigrants— point to their numbers in federal prisons. It’s meaningless as an indicator of immigrant crime rates.
When you highlight the fact that crime is lower among the immigrant population—including undocumented immigrants—in the United States than in the general population, someone eventually pipes up to ask, “Then why are there so many immigrants in federal prison?”
This question hopes to serve as a “gotcha” moment. It’s calculated to provoke the fear that, if so many immigrants are in federal prison, they must be more likely to be violent criminals, mass murders and drug traffickers, etcetera. Arguably, it’s an attempt to make infamous Trump’s “murderers and rapists” slur more palatable by gussying it up as a statistic.
Some facts then. As of March 20th, 2021, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, immigrants in federal prison represent about 16.6 percent of the federal prison population. That percentage is markedly higher than the percentage of immigrants in the general…
