A quick reminder: the immigrants who keep murdering people in the United States aren’t outliers. They do the same thing at home. Homicide rates in Central America are the highest on the planet, surpassing those of Africa.

For perspective, the murder rate in the U.S. is 5.35 per 100,000 people. This is somewhat skewed, because deplorable white people are, relatively speaking, slackers. Based on arrest records, more than half (52.6%) of U.S. homicides are assigned to the 13.4% of the population that identifies as black The rate among people of mainly European and other non-African descent is about 2.81 per 100,000. Cull the figures a bit to eliminate Hispanic murders, and the rate drops to 1.70 per 100,000. Call that, to oversimplify only a little, the legacy white murder rate.

Here’s how this compares with the rates per hundred-K in parts of the Americas that bring us zesty cuisine and undocumented Iowa farmhands:

El Salvador 82.84 (raw number: 5,257) Honduras 56.52 (raw number: 5,150) Venezuela 56.33 (raw number: 17,773) Jamaica 47.01 (raw number: 1,354) Guatemala 27.26 (raw number: 4,520) Colombia 25.50 (raw number: 12,402) Brazil 21.53 (raw number: 61,283) Mexico 19.26 (raw number: 24,559) Dominican Republic 15.18 (raw number: 1,616)

And elsewhere:

Lesotho 41.25 (raw number: 897) South Africa 33.97 (raw number: 19,016) Cent African Republic 19.76 (raw number: 913) Dem Repub of Congo 13.55 (raw number: 10,322) United States 5.35 (raw number: 17,250) U.S. Legacy Rate 1.70 (raw number: about 5,468)

The rates and raw numbers are from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report covering 2016 [PDF] (Lesotho’s rate is from 2015; Jamaica’s from 2012). I’ve excluded small jurisdictions. The U.S. Legacy Rate is derived from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting: Table 21: Arrests by Race and Ethnicity, 2016.

There are no national statistics on immigrant crime in the U.S, and federal crime data have weaknesses: FBI stats drawn from more than 13,000 agencies cover only about 80% of the population; arrests are reported in only about 68% of homicides, and ethnicity is reported in only about 73% of arrests.

But the short answer is: unless social base rates abroad are meaningless, it’s highly likely that we’re importing murder from cultures where it’s commonplace. The alternative view is that our border-runners represent the social cream of Latin and South America. If you don’t buy that, it’s fair to expect more angel families.