In March, Cato Institute published a “policy brief” study arguing that illegal immigrants are less likely to be convicted and placed into prison than citizens. However, basic mathematics debunks the claims by Cato, revealing that illegals are far more likely to be convicted: instead of Cato’s claim of a .85% incarceration rate for illegal immigrants, using realistic numbers suggests that the incarceration percentage is at least 1.68%, almost double of Cato’s number.

Cato’s numbers come from the “United States Census’s American Community Survey” (ACS) and they “focus on immigrants aged 18 to 54 who are incarcerated in the United States” for 2014. However, there are no raw numbers for illegal immigrants who are incarcerated due to many states not collecting this data.

This causes a major problem, and the authors admit that they have to guess: “As a result, we have to use common statistical methods to identify illegal immigrant prisoners by excluding incarcerated respondents who have characteristics that they are unlikely to have. In other words, we can identify likely illegal immigrants by looking at prisoners with individual characteristics that are highly correlated with being an illegal immigrant.”

One of their conditions is ” is not living in a household where somebody received Food Stamps.” A Washington Post article explained that illegal immigrants were receiving food stamps, which is why many decided to forgo them when President Trump took office.

This suggests that Cato under-estimated the number of illegal immigrants by a significant amount even though they inappropriately claim “we likely overestimate the number of illegal immigrants who are incarcerated.”

Regardless of the estimates, the actual numbers do not add up.

Reversing the Data

Cato provides two important sets of data. The first is of total incarceration estimates: “There were an estimated 2,007,502 natives, 122,939 illegal immigrants, and 63,994 legal immigrants incarcerated in 2014.” The second is percentage incarcerated: ” The incarceration rate was 1.53 percent for natives, 0.85 percent for illegal immigrants, and 0.47 percent for legal immigrants.”

At no time does Cato use these numbers to determine what a total population would look like. According to the number (total incarcerated divided by percentage of population incarcerated), there are 131,209,281 citizens, 14,463,411 illegal immigrants, and 13,615,744 legal immigrants in the United States between the ages of 18 and 54.

According to recent population data (2015), there were roughly 21,586,000 between 20-24, 21,102,000 between 25-29, 19,962,000 between 30-34, 20,180,000 between 40-44, 22,709,000 between 45-49, and 22,298,000 between 50-54. 127,837,000 total between 20 and 54. This would place the estimates at 4 million below the “citizens” estimate and 18.5 million below the “citizens” estimate plus “illegal immigrants” estimate.

There were 22,040,000 between 15-19. If half of this number (11 million) can be included, then the total population would be 7 million above the “citizens” estimate and 4 million below the “citizens” estimate plus “illegal immigrants” estimate.

Assuming 2015 population numbers were higher than 2014, then Cato’s estimate either over counts the percentage of citizens who are incarcerated or under counts the percentage of illegal immigrants who are incarcerated.

Looking Further at the Data

Based on Cato’s data, there are 14,463,411 illegal immigrants between the ages of 18 and 54. According to Pew Research Center, the total population of illegal immigrants was only 11.1 million.

Dividing Pew’s estimate by Cato’s total illegal immigrant estimate establishes that 1.107% of the illegal immigrant population is incarcerated. This assumes that all illegal immigrants are between the ages of 18 and 54.

According to the CIA World Factbook estimates, 66% of adults are between the age of 15 to 64. Applying the same percentage to Pew’s numbers provides an adult estimate of 7.326 million. Dividing the estimated illegal immigrant total population by this estimate of adult illegal immigrants provides us with a 1.68% incarceration rate.

Let’s look at this another way.

The illegal immigrant jail population of 122,939 divided by the total population of 2,130444 (citizens and illegal immigrants) reveals that illegal immigrants represent 5.8% of the incarcerated population. According to Pew, illegal immigrants were only 3.4% of the population. This suggests that illegal immigrants are 58.6% more likely than citizens to be incarcerated.

Conclusions

The Cato Institute’s numbers are not based on any proven data. Their estimates always favor dramatically increasing illegal immigrant populations as a whole while minimizing illegal immigrant incarcerated populations. The numbers provided above assume that the survey data relied on by Cato is accurate. It is likely that there are far more illegals incarcerated, placing the number well over the citizen incarceration number.

This data also matches anecdotal evidence regarding sanctuary citizens, illegal immigrant crime violence, and news reports.

Cato’s motivation behind producing this study was to contradict President Trump’s actions regarding illegal immigration: “His order is based on the widespread perception that illegal immigrants are a significant source of crime in the United States.”

However, a real look at the number confirms that President Trump was correct in his assessment of the situation and his actions to curb illegal immigrants and their far greater likelihood to commit crimes.

Update: On June 23, 2018, the Associated Press ran a fake “fact check” using Cato’s obviously wrong numbers to claim President Trump was wrong about illegal alien crimes.