Information on Certain Illegal Aliens Arrested in the United
States (09-MAY-05, GAO-05-646R).
The former Immigration and Naturalization Service estimated that
as of January 2000 the total unauthorized immigrant population
residing in the United States was 7 million. This total includes
those who entered the United States illegally and those who
entered legally but overstayed their authorized period of stay. A
more recent study estimated that there were about 10 million
illegal aliens living in the United States as of March 2005. The
study estimated that nearly 700,000 aliens entered the United
States illegally or overstayed their authorized period of stay
each year between 2000 and 2004. Some illegal aliens in the
United States have been arrested and incarcerated in federal and
state prisons and local jails, adding to already overcrowded
prisons and jails. On April 7, 2005, we issued a report on
criminal aliens that were incarcerated in federal and state
prisons and local jails. Our report contained information on the
number of criminal aliens incarcerated, their country of
citizenship or country of birth, and the cost to incarcerate
them. Congress also requested that we provide information on the
criminal history of aliens incarcerated in federal and state
prisons or local jails who had entered the country illegally. For
a population of aliens that entered the country illegally and
were incarcerated in federal or state prisons or local jails,
this report addresses the following questions: (1) How many times
have they been arrested? (2) How many and what type of criminal
offenses have they been arrested for? (3) What states were they
arrested in?
-------------------------Indexing Terms-------------------------
REPORTNUM: GAO-05-646R
ACCNO: A23779
TITLE: Information on Certain Illegal Aliens Arrested in the
United States
DATE: 05/09/2005
SUBJECT: Arrests
Correctional facilities
Crimes
Criminals
Data collection
Illegal aliens
Immigrants
Law enforcement
Population statistics
Prisoners
Statistical data
FBI Integrated Automated Fingerprint
Identification System
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GAO-05-646R
United States Government Accountability Office Washington, DC 20548
May 9, 2005
The Honorable John N. Hostettler Chairman, Subcommittee on Immigration,
Border Security, and Claims Committee on the Judiciary House of
Representatives
The Honorable Steve King House of Representatives
The Honorable Melissa Hart House of Representatives
Subject: Information on Certain Illegal Aliens Arrested in the United
States
The former Immigration and Naturalization Service estimated that as of
January 2000 the total unauthorized immigrant population residing in the
United States was 7 million.1 This total includes those who entered the
United States illegally and those who entered legally but overstayed their
authorized period of stay. A more recent study estimated that there were
about 10 million illegal aliens living in the United States as of March
2005.2 The study estimated that nearly 700,000 aliens entered the United
States illegally or overstayed their authorized period of stay each year
between 2000 and 2004. Some illegal aliens in the United States have been
arrested and incarcerated in federal and state prisons and local jails,
adding to already overcrowded prisons and jails.
On April 7, 2005, we issued a report on criminal aliens3 that were
incarcerated in federal and state prisons and local jails.4 Our report
1Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United
States: 1990 to 2000, Office of Policy and Planning, U.S. Immigration and
Naturalization Service.
2Estimates of the Size and Characteristics of the Undocumented Population,
Jeffrey S. Passel, Pew Hispanic Research Center, March 2005.
3An alien legally or illegally in the United States who has been convicted
of a crime.
4GAO, Information on Criminal Aliens Incarcerated in Federal and State
Prisons and Local Jails, GAO-05-337R (Washington, D.C.: April 7, 2005).
contained information on the number of criminal aliens incarcerated, their
country of citizenship or country of birth, and the cost to incarcerate
them. You also requested that we provide information on the criminal
history of aliens incarcerated in federal and state prisons or local jails
who had entered the country illegally. For a population of aliens that
entered the country illegally and were incarcerated in federal or state
prisons or local jails, this report addresses the following questions:
o How many times have they been arrested?
o How many and what type of criminal offenses have they been arrested
for?
o What states were they arrested in?
To obtain information to answer these objectives, we identified a
population of 55,322 aliens that the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) in the Department of Homeland Security determined, based
upon information in its immigration databases, had entered the country
illegally and were still illegally in the country at the time of their
incarceration in federal or state prison or local jail during fiscal year
2003. We then analyzed selected data contained in the criminal history
record, commonly referred to as the rap sheet, of these illegal aliens
maintained within the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Integrated
Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS).5 To assess the
reliability of immigration databases used to make the determination about
an alien's legal status, we discussed internal control processes for
ensuring data quality with responsible ICE staff and found the data to be
reliable for purposes of this report. To assess the reliability of IAFIS
data, we discussed the data collection methods and internal control
processes for ensuring data quality with responsible FBI staff and
reviewed relevant policies and procedures. IAFIS may not contain all of
the arrests for the illegal aliens in our study population since seven
states report only their first arrest to the FBI. Subsequent arrest data
is available only from the state's criminal history record system. While
the magnitude of any undercount is unknown, we found that the data we used
for our analyses were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of this
report.
5IAFIS contains the fingerprints and corresponding criminal history for
more than 47 million subjects. The fingerprints and corresponding criminal
history information are submitted voluntarily by federal, state and local
law enforcement agencies.
Results
Several things should be noted regarding our analysis. First, an arrest
does not necessarily result in a prosecution or a conviction. Second, our
analysis is limited to the aliens that ICE determined to have entered the
United States illegally. Third, since all arrests for an individual may
not be recorded in IAFIS, our data represent the minimum number of arrests
for these illegal aliens. Last, our analysis is not designed to infer
conclusions about the arrest history of other illegal aliens not in our
study population who entered the country illegally and have been arrested.
In April, we discussed with your offices the results of our work. This
report conveys the information provided during those discussions (see
encl. I).
We performed our work from October 2004 through May 2005 in accordance
with generally accepted government auditing standards. Further details on
our scope and methodology, including how we selected the illegal aliens in
our study population, are discussed in enclosure II.
The briefing slides in enclosure I address each of our three questions. In
summary, for our study population of 55,322 illegal aliens, we found that:
o They were arrested at least a total of 459,614 times, averaging about
8 arrests per illegal alien. Nearly all had more than 1 arrest.
Thirty-eight percent (about 21,000) had between 2 and 5 arrests, 32
percent (about 18,000) had between 6 and 10 arrests, and 26 percent (about
15,000) had 11 or more arrests. Most of the arrests occurred after 1990.
o They were arrested for a total of about 700,000 criminal offenses,
averaging about 13 offenses per illegal alien. One arrest incident may
include multiple offenses, a fact that explains why there are nearly one
and half times more offenses than arrests.6 Almost all of these illegal
aliens
were arrested for more than 1 offense. Slightly more than half of the
55,322 illegal aliens had between 2 and 10 offenses. About 45 percent of
all offenses were drug or immigration offenses. About 15 percent were
property-related offenses such as burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle
theft, and property damage. About 12 percent were for violent offenses
such as murder, robbery, assault, and sex-related crimes. The balance was
6For example, a burglar may enter a home, steal some of the victim's
property, and drive away in the victim's car. If arrested, the person
could be charged with three offenses, burglary, theft, and motor vehicle
theft.
for such other offenses as traffic violations, including driving under the
influence; fraud-including forgery and counterfeiting; weapons violations;
and obstruction of justice.
o Eighty percent of all arrests occurred in three states-California,
Texas, and Arizona. Specifically, about 58 percent of all arrests occurred
in California, 14 percent in Texas, and 8 percent in Arizona.
The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security reviewed a draft of this
report and had technical comments, which we incorporated as
Agency Comments
and Our Evaluation
appropriate.
We are sending copies to the Departments of Justice and Homeland
Security and interested congressional committees, and we will make
copies available to others who request them. In addition, the report will
be
available at no charge on GAO's Web site at http://www.gao.gov.
If you or your staff have any questions concerning this report, please
contact me at (202) 512-8816 or by e-mail at [email protected] or Michael
Dino, Assistant Director, at (213) 830-1150 or [email protected]. Key
contributors to this report were Amy Bernstein, Ann H. Finley, Evan
Gilman, Frederick Lyles, Jr., Jan Montgomery, Karen O'Conor, Jason
Schwartz, and Laura Czohara.
Sincerely yours,
Richard M. Stana, Director
Homeland Security and Justice Issues
Major offense category1 Category includes
Arson arson, reckless burning, and possession of arson
materials
Assault assault, battery, assault with a deadly weapon,
endangerment, and threats
Burglary breaking and entering, burglary, and possession of
burglary tools
Disorderly conduct disturbing the peace, fighting, intoxication,
public nuisance, and disorderly conduct
use/under the influence, possession, possession
Drugs with intent to distribute, sales, manufacturing,
transporting, and possession of drug paraphernalia
deceptive practices or identification, fraud,
Fraud, forgery, and giving false information, altering or forging
counterfeiting documents, and counterfeiting or possession of
counterfeit materials or tools
Homicide murder, manslaughter, and homicide
illegal entry, illegal reentry, false claim to
Immigration U.S. citizenship, alien smuggling, and removal
proceedings
Kidnapping false imprisonment, kidnapping, and taking
hostages
Larceny/theft grand and petty larceny and theft, shoplifting,
embezzlement, and money laundering
Major offense category Category includes
Motor vehicle theft auto theft, carjacking, and taking a vehicle
without consent
escaping, evading, being a fugitive of justice,
Obstruction of justice failing to appear, failing to register as a sex
offender, resisting arrest, and interfering with or
obstructing an officer or justice proceedings
destruction of property, vandalism, and criminal or
Property damage malicious mischief
armed robbery, robbery of a dwelling, robbery of a
Robbery bank, and unarmed robbery
Sex offenses lewd and lascivious acts, rape, sexual assault,
indecent exposure, prostitution, and molestation
Stolen property buying, selling, receiving, or possessing stolen
property
driving under the influence, hit and run, no proof
Traffic violations of insurance, no driver's license, and moving
violations such as speeding and failure to stop
Weapons violations possession of a weapon, discharging a weapon,
altering a weapon, and carrying a concealed weapon
includes trespassing, gang participation,
Other littering, child cruelty, racketeering, and illegal
waste dumping
Offenses for
Offenses for illegal illegal aliens in
aliens in federal state prisons and
Total offenses prisons local jails
Criminal offense Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent
Drugs 166,722 24% 64,737 24% 101,985 24%
Immigration 144,166 21% 84,382 32% 59,784 14%
Traffic violations 55,060 8% 13,290 5% 41,770 10%
Assault 50,958 7% 14,908 6% 36,050 8%
Obstruction of
justice 45,632 7% 15,064 6% 30,568 7%
Burglary 38,689 6% 13,156 5% 25,533 6%
Larceny/theft 31,883 5% 12,206 5% 19,677 5%
Fraud, forgery, and
counterfeiting 25,773 4% 8,564 3% 17,209 4%
Weapons violations 22,263 3% 7,236 3% 15,027 4%
Motor vehicle theft 20,950 3% 6,494 2% 14,456 3%
Robbery 15,305 2% 4,177 2% 11,128 3%
Stolen property 13,415 2% 4,201 2% 9,214 2%
Sex offense 11,833 2% 2,501 1% 9,332 2%
Disorderly conduct 8,768 1% 2,986 1% 5,782 1%
Property damage 6,478 1% 2,238 1% 4,240 1%
Homicide 5,992 1% 1,156 <1% 4,836 1%
Kidnapping 3,236 <1% 837 <1% 2,399 1%
Arson 457 <1% 173 <1% 284 <1%
Other 24,310 4% 9,403 4% 14,907 4%
Total 691,890 100% 267,709 100% 424,181 100%
Offense Number Percent
Immigration 12,694 68%
Drugs 3,978 21%
Unknown 1,183 6%
Weapons, explosives, arson 251 1%
Fraud, bribery, extortion 185 1%
Burglary, larceny, property crimes 95 1%
Assault 41 <1%
Robbery 28 <1%
Kidnapping 26 <1%
Court, corrections 25 <1%
Homicide 13 <1%
Other 62 <1%
Totals 18,581 100.0%
Enclosure II: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology
Using data we had obtained for our report, Information on Criminal Aliens
Incarcerated in Federal and State Prisons and Local Jails, GAO-05-337R, we
selected our study population of aliens that illegally entered the United
States using the following methodology. We started with data we obtained
from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) on the population of aliens
incarcerated in federal prison as of December 27, 2003. We added to this
the population of convicted criminal aliens incarcerated in state prisons
and local jails between July 1, 2002, and June 30, 2003 for whom state and
local governments sought reimbursement under the State Criminal Alien
Assistance Program (SCAAP).1 These two populations were chosen because
they were the latest population data we had when we began our analysis.
From this combined population we identified those criminal aliens that had
both an alien identification number and an FBI identification number in
the data records we obtained. An alien identification number is a unique
number assigned to an alien who has come into contact with immigration
authorities. The FBI identification number is a unique identifier the FBI
assigns to a set of fingerprints that allows linking relevant records of
arrests and any subsequent activity within the criminal justice system. We
needed to have alien identification numbers in order to be able to
identify those aliens illegally in the United States and FBI numbers in
order to obtain the relevant criminal history record information from the
FBI. For those criminal aliens with both an alien identification number
and an FBI identification number, we requested that the U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) within the Department of Homeland Security
identify those aliens that, according to their records, had entered the
country illegally. For those aliens that ICE identified as having entered
the country illegally, we provided the FBI number and other identifying
information to the FBI and requested their criminal history records. The
criminal history record for each unique FBI identification number
contained the dates of each arrest, the arresting agency, an offense
code,2 and a literal description of each offense for which the alien was
arrested, e.g., drug possession, burglary, robbery. The arrest information
for each illegal alien is all arrests recorded in IAFIS as of October 28,
2004. Table 1 describes the number of criminal aliens at each level of our
analysis.
1The Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) program that
reimburses state and local governments for a portion of their costs of
incarcerating some, but not all, criminal aliens illegally in the country.
2A numeric code that the arresting law enforcement agency assigns to the
criminal offense.
Table 1: Selection of Illegal Alien Study Population Used For Our Analysis
Inmates incarcerated by state
prisons and local jails between
July 1, 2002, and June 30, 2003,
Inmates incarcerated in federal and submitted to SCAAP for
prison on December 27, 2003 reimbursement
Number of convicted criminal aliens 46,063 262,105
Number of unique convicted criminal aliens with a FBI 36,390 59,427
identification number and an alien identification
number
Number of the above unique convicted criminal aliens 18,581 36,741
that ICE determined to have entered illegally
Total population of illegal aliens used in our analysis 55,322
Source: GAO
To determine the number of arrests for our study population of illegal
aliens, we totaled the number of unique dates of arrest for each unique
FBI number contained in the FBI criminal history records we obtained. The
earliest arrest record was in 1947, the latest October 28, 2004. The
criminal history records contained several hundred thousand different
literal descriptions of arrest offenses. To determine the offenses for
which these illegal aliens were arrested, we categorized the arrest
descriptions contained in the criminal history records into 1 of 19 major
offense categories (e.g., immigration, drugs) using FBI guidance to law
enforcement agencies on how to categorize different types of crimes. FBI
officials concurred with the way we categorized the literal descriptions
into the 19 major offense categories. To identify the states these illegal
aliens were arrested in, we analyzed the data contained in the arresting
agency field of the criminal history record for each unique date of
arrest.
Data Reliability We determined that the BOP data are sufficiently
reliable for the purposes of this report. To assess the reliability of the
data, we discussed with responsible BOP officials how data on the number
of federal inmates and whether they are a citizen or an alien are
collected and maintained in BOP's inmate tracking system called SENTRY. We
reviewed BOP policies and procedures related to entering data into the
SENTRY system and reviewed a Department of Justice Inspector General
review of the SENTRY system.
We determined that SCAAP data are sufficiently reliable for the purposes
of this report. To assess the reliability of the SCAAP data, we discussed
with responsible BJA officials how data on criminal aliens reimbursed
through SCAAP are collected and maintained. We reviewed BJA SCAAP policies
and procedures and guidance on how state and local jurisdictions can apply
for reimbursement under the program. State and local jurisdictions submit
inmates to BJA for reimbursement based on the inmates' self-reporting
their country of citizenship or place of birth. The state and local
jurisdictions certify they have exercised due diligence in determining
which inmates qualify for reimbursement and the inmates' data, such as
name and if available, alien identification and FBI identification
numbers.
We determined that ICE data are sufficiently reliable for the purposes of
this report. To assess the reliability of ICE's determination that aliens
with both an alien identification number and an FBI identification number
had entered illegally, we discussed with the ICE official who conducted
the analysis the process he used to make this determination. The
determination was made after querying several immigration databases using
the unique alien identification number we had supplied.
We determined that the FBI's IAFIS data on arrests are sufficiently
reliable for the purposes of this report. To assess the reliability of the
data, we discussed with responsible FBI officials how data on arrests are
collected and maintained in IAFIS. We reviewed FBI policies and procedures
related to entering data into the FBI system. The FBI estimates 8 percent
of the criminal arrests are no longer maintained by the FBI because 7
states, Colorado, Florida, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon, New Jersey, and
North Carolina only report their first arrest to the FBI.
We performed our work from October 2004 through May 2005 in accordance
with generally accepted government auditing standards.
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