Illegal Immigration, Immigration Enforcement Policies, and American Citizens' Victimization Risk, [United States], 2005-2015 (ICPSR 39329)
Version Date: Jan 28, 2026 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
Eric P. Baumer, Pennsylvania State University;
Min Xie, University of Maryland
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR39329.v1
Version V1
Summary View help for Summary
This project was designed to examine two research questions:
- Does living in a county with a larger or growing share of undocumented immigrants increase personal non-fatal victimization risk?
- Does the presence of selected immigration policies within U.S. communities--the 2008 Secure Communities program, Section 287(g) of the 1996 Immigration and Nationality Act task force agreements and jail enforcement programs, or "sanctuary" anti-detainer policies--and the actual immigration enforcement applied impact personal non-fatal victimization risk?
These questions were addressed with a longitudinal multilevel dataset that integrated publicly accessible county-level data on legal and undocumented immigrant concentration, immigration policies, and immigration law enforcement actions to individual-level panel data on victimization from the restricted-use, area-identified, 2005-2015 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Contextual data on social, economic, and racial-ethnic indicators at the county- and tract-level were also used.
This collection includes analytic datasets drawn from publicly accessible secondary sources and syntax files containing code for variable construction. The restricted NCVS data will not be archived at ICPSR.
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Funding View help for Funding
Subject Terms View help for Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
Smallest Geographic Unit View help for Smallest Geographic Unit
Census tract
Distributor(s) View help for Distributor(s)
Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)
Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
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The restricted individual-level National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data are only accessible through U.S. Census Bureau Federal Statistical Research Data Centers (FSDRCs). Please refer to the Data Road Map documentation for instructions on how to access these data.
Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose
The purpose of this study was to assess whether personal risk of victimization is affected by estimated levels of undocumented immigrants by county, county immigration policies, and corresponding immigration enforcement activities.
Study Design View help for Study Design
This study linked secondary aggregate-level data from publicly available sources to individual-level data from the Census Bureau's restricted area-identified National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Please see the P.I. codebook for more detailed source information and measure calculations.
Data on Secure Communities and Section 287(g) agreements (DS1) were obtained from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) library. Data on anti-detainer policies were gathered and cross-checked from ICE's "Weekly Declined Detainer Outcome Report", the House Appropriations Committee's reports on the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Bill for fiscal years 2007-2018, the Catholic Immigration Legal Network's list of anti-detainer policies, and interactive map data from the Center for Immigration Studies.
Deportations (DS2) and detainers (DS3) data were extracted from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.
Estimates of undocumented immigrants by county (DS4) were drawn from population estimates from American Community Survey (ACS) five-year county files and from the Migration Policy Institute.
Economic and sociodemographic attributes by county (DS5) and by census tract (DS6) were drawn from the 2000 Decennial census and the five-year ACS files.
Time Method View help for Time Method
Universe View help for Universe
U.S. counties and census tracts
Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation
Data Source View help for Data Source
Catholic Immigration Legal Network
Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
U.S. House Committee on Appropriations
National Crime Victimization Survey (restricted individual-level data)
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC)
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
American Community Survey (ACS)
Center for Immigration Studies
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
Description of Variables View help for Description of Variables
County-level data:
- Start and end dates for Secure Communities, Section 287(g), and anti-detainer policies
- Number of deportations under Secure Communities
- Number of detainers
- Estimates of undocumented population
Tract-level data:
- Economic indicators: median household income; percentage of households receiving public assistance, at or below poverty line
- Sociodemographic indicators: percentage 18-34 years old, foreign-born, recently-arrived foreign born, unemployed, without a high school diploma, women-headed households with children
- Racial-ethnic indicators: percentage Black, Latino, non-Latino White, Asian/Pacific Islander, or other race/ethnicity; race entropy
Original Release Date View help for Original Release Date
2026-01-28
Version History View help for Version History
2026-01-28 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Notes
The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.
ICPSR usually offers files in multiple formats for researchers to be able to access data and documentation in formats that work well within their needs. If you have questions about the accessibility of materials distributed by ICPSR or require further assistance, please visit ICPSR’s Accessibility Center.
This dataset is maintained and distributed by the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD), the criminal justice archive within ICPSR. NACJD is primarily sponsored by three agencies within the U.S. Department of Justice: the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.