234 pct rise in arrests of non-US citizens,10 pct for US citizens in 2 decades

The number of federal arrests has risen by 234 percent for non-US citizens whereas it rose only 10 percent for US citizens in the last two decades. In 2018, 64 percent of all federal arrests were of non-US citizens, the Bureau of Justice Statistics announced today in a report. In comparison, 37 percent of all federal arrests in 1998 were of non-US citizens.

While non-US citizens make up 7 percent of the US population (per the U.S. Census Bureau for2017), they accounted for 15 percent of all federal arrests and 15 percent of prosecutions in US district court for non-immigration crimes in 2018. Non-US citizens accounted for 24 percent of all federal drug arrests and 25 percent of all federal property arrests, including 28 percent of all federal fraud arrests.

The report also highlighted the country of citizenship of persons arrested by federal law enforcement changed notably over time. From 1998 to 2018, Mexican citizens' share of federal arrests rose from 28 percent to 40 percent. Citizens of Central American countries' share of federal arrests rose from 1 percent to 20 percent during the same period, while US citizens' share of federal arrests fell from 63 percent to 36 percent. Federal arrests of Central Americans rose more than 30-fold over two decades, from 1,171 in 1998 to 39,858 in 2018. The number of federal arrests of Mexican citizens (78,062) exceeded the number of federal arrests of US citizens (70,542) in 2018.

Across 20 years, 95 percent of the increase in federal arrests was due to immigration crimes. From 1998 to 2018, federal immigration arrests increased 5-fold (from 20,942 to 108,667), rising more than 50,000 in one year from 2017 to 2018. In 2018, 90 percent of suspects arrested for federal immigration crimes were male, while 10 percent were female. 85 percent of federal arrests of non-US citizens in 2018 were for immigration offenses and another 5 percent of arrests were immigration-related.

Of suspects prosecuted in US district court in 2018, 57 percent were US citizens and 43 percent were non-US citizens. Almost all (99.7 percent) of the non-citizens prosecuted in US district court were prosecuted for something other than first-time illegal entry.

The five crime types for which non-US citizens were most likely to be prosecuted in US district court were illegal re-entry (72 percent of prosecutions), drugs (13 percent), fraud (4.5 percent), alien smuggling (4 percent), and misuse of visas (2 percent). The five crime types for which US citizens were most likely to be prosecuted in US district court were drugs (38 percent of prosecutions), weapons (21 percent), fraud (12 percent), public order (12 percent), and alien smuggling (6 percent).