More from the article ...
... Trump criticized many countries for allowing immigration that was supposedly destroying their countries. "According to the Council of Europe, in 2024, almost 50 percent of inmates in German prisons were foreign nationals or migrants," he said. "In Austria, the number was 53 percent. In Greece, the number was 54 percent. In Switzerland, it's 72 percent."
Did you notice which country he didn't mention? Donald J. Trump, the man elected president by complaining about immigrants bringing crime to these shores, didn't point to high immigrant incarceration rates in the United States. That's because immigrant incarceration rates are low in the U.S. -- far below those of native-born Americans. There were no numbers for him to appeal to. Through omission, Trump admitted that his potent criticism of immigration, used to such effect on the campaign trail, rests on a cracked foundation. ...
The American federal system means that most criminal laws and their enforcement are on the state level. Texas is one of the few states that identifies both legal and illegal immigrants through the criminal justice system. Crime data from Texas show legal and illegal immigrants had criminal conviction rates 58 percent and 48 percent lower than native-born Americans, respectively. In 2022, legal immigrants had a homicide conviction rate 62 percent below that of native-born Americans, and illegal immigrants were 36 percent below.
For studying immigrant criminality, you can't do much better than focusing on Texas: It borders Mexico, has the second-largest illegal immigrant population of any state, and it'd be hard for all but the most committed populist to claim there's a conspiracy in the state's Republican-dominated government to suppress evidence of immigrant criminality.
Texas is just one state, but nationwide estimates also show that legal and illegal immigrants have a much lower incarceration rate than native-born Americans.
The difference is so great that native-born Americans are 267 percent more likely to have been incarcerated by age 33 than all immigrants. ...
[emphasis mine]
