Study: Non-Citizens Accounted for 64% of Arrests for Federal Offenses in 2018

A 25-page report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that non-citizens accounted for 64 percent of arrests for federal offenses in 2018.

The report showed a complete flip from 1998 when 63 percent of arrests for federal offenses were of U.S. citizens. In 2018, 64 percent of arrests for federal offenses were non-citizens.

Non-U.S. citizens make up roughly seven percent of the U.S. population, according to the 2017 U.S. Census Bureau, but non-U.S. citizens still “accounted for 15% of all federal arrests and 15% of prosecutions in U.S. district court for non-immigration crimes in 2018,” per the report.

In the five judicial districts along the U.S. Southern Border with Mexico, federal arrests nearly doubled between the years of 1998 and 2018 — 33 percent to 65 percent.

In the span of those 20 years, nearly 95 percent of the increase in federal arrests was “due to immigration offenses.”

Other key findings showed that the majority of these non-citizens who were arrested came from Mexico (roughly 40 percent) trailed by Central Americans at 20 percent. {snip}

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