section_path: Crime and law enforcement/Relationship between illegal immigration and crime
section_name: Relationship between illegal immigration and crime
paragraph_text: Relationship between illegal immigration and crime
  
  Illegal immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens in the United States. Multiple studies have found that illegal immigration to the United States did not increase violent crime. A 2016 study found no link between illegal immigrant populations and violent crime, although there is a small but significant association between illegal immigrants and drug-related crime. A 2017 study found that "Increased undocumented immigration was significantly associated with reductions in drug arrests, drug overdose deaths, and DUI arrests, net of other factors." A 2017 study found that California's extension of driving licenses to unauthorized immigrants "did not increase the total number of accidents or the occurrence of fatal accidents, but it did reduce the likelihood of hit and run accidents, thereby improving traffic safety and reducing costs for California drivers... providing unauthorized immigrants with access to driver's licenses can create positive externalities for the communities in which they live." A 2018 study in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy found that by restricting the employment opportunities for unauthorized immigrants, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) likely caused an increase in crime. A 2018 PLOS One study estimated that the illegal immigrant population in the United States was 22 million (approximately twice as large as the estimate derived from US Census Bureau figures); an author of the study notes that this has implications for the relationship between illegal immigration and crime suggesting the correlation is lower than previously estimated: "You have the same number of crimes but now spread over twice as many people as was believed before, which right away means that the crime rate among illegal immigrants is essentially half whatever was previously believed." A 2019 analysis found no evidence that illegal immigration increased crime. A 2020 study found little evidence of a relationship between unauthorized immigration and terrorism.