The Problem

Throughout U.S. history, rising waves of immigration have given way to rising waves of angst over immigrant crime. Today, nearly half of all Americans believe immigration makes crime worse for the U.S. With current estimates predicting immigrants will drive U.S. population growth, accounting for 88 percent of the population increase between 2015 and 2065, growing trepidation and alarm regarding immigrants is not only probable, but also problematic. Whereas immigration has been at the top of political agendas for numerous administrations, the relationship between immigration and crime is at the forefront of current political and public discourse. Today's rhetoric reinforces the notion that (more) immigration increases the rate of crime and this social discourse is exacerbated by media depictions of the criminal-immigrant. The social construction of the criminalimmigrant persists despite a hearty scientific basis demonstrating immigrants have relatively low levels of criminal involvement even with exposure to traditional criminogenic risk factors (e.g., instability, residence in disadvantaged areas) and at a time when the apprehension of criminal undocumented immigrants at the border continue to decline to historically low levels.

Looking back, these waves of angst and corresponding discourse and rhetoric, brought about a socio-legal response to the alleged criminal-immigrant, “crimmigration,” a term coined by legal scholar Julie Stumpf in her 2006 publication “The Crimmigration Crisis: Immigrants, Crime, and Sovereign Power.” Starting in the 1980s, and persisting today, crimmigration has been demarcated by a disappearing delineation between (civil) immigration law and criminal law. Through a series of sometimes-incremental changes to laws and their enforcement, these two traditionally separate areas of law – immigration and criminal – have become intertwined. This fusion of law not only influences policies and practices throughout the criminal justice system, but also the framing of an important social and human rights issue. As a result, we have a social milieu characterized by the presumption of illegality and the criminalization of a class of people.

While such narratives have the power to skew public perceptions of immigrant criminality, the effect is more pervasive, shaping local, state, and federal decisions regarding formal responses to immigration and crime and the allocation of scarce public safety resources.