Statistics on Criminal Histories of DACA Requestor

Quote:

---

Statistics on Criminal Histories of DACA Requestors

https://millermayer.com/2018/uscis-releases-d...t-records/

On June 18, 2018, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a news release announcing its publication of data on the criminal histories of requestors for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) [PDF version]. Along with the news release, the USCIS included the statistics [PDF version]. In this post, we will briefly examine some of the notable statistics of the criminal histories of DACA requestors.

The statistics cover DACA requestors from 2012 to 2018. In this time frame, there were 888,765 individual DACA requestors. The data reveals how many DACA requestors had arrest records at the time they were queried in USCIS systems. The term “arrests” includes civil apprehensions and does not reflect that the arrests resulted in convictions.

From 2012 to 2018, 770,628 DACA requestors were approved for DACA. Of these, 59,786, or 7.76-percent, had a prior arrest at the time systems were queried. 53,792 with a prior arrest were approved, whereas 7,814 were approved with a later arrest.

By far the two most common reasons for arrest among approved DACA requestors were driving related offenses excluding driving under the influence (38.90-percent of all arrests) and immigration-related offenses (22.05-percent).

Only two other arrest types made up more than 5-percent of the total arrests for approved DACA requestors: theft, larceny, and similar offenses (12.32-percent) and drug-related excluding driving under the influence (8.57-percent).

The USCIS news release notes that some individuals were approved with arrests for other offenses, including serious ones, such as battery (4.65-percent), driving under the influence (4.42-percent), assault (3.73-percent), rape (0.06-percent), and murder (0.02-percent).

From 2012 to 2018, 66,863 DACA requestors were denied DACA. Of these, 20,993, or 31.40-percent, had at least one arrest. Unfortunately, the USCIS's data does not include statistics on the nature of the arrests for those who were denied DACA benefits.

DACA requestors with no arrests were approved in 89.2-percent of all cases, and denied in 5.8% of cases. DACA requestors with exactly one arrest were approved in 70.8-percent of cases and denied in 17.5-percent of cases. Those DACA requestors with more than one arrest were approved in 54.8% of cases, while 33.5-percent of such cases were denied.

It is worth noting, however, that the vast majority of DACA requestors (797,297 in total) had no arrest record when the system was queried

---