DOI: 10.3886/icpsr39329.v1
title: Illegal Immigration, Immigration Enforcement Policies, and American Citizens' Victimization Risk, [United States], 2005-2015
title: Version 1

description: 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.
description: 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.
description: 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.
description: 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
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: County-Level Data: Immigration Policies
DS2: County-Level Data: Number of Deportations
DS3: County-Level Data: Number of Detainers
DS4: County-Level Data: Number of Undocumented Immigrants
DS5: County-Level Data: Demographics
DS6: Tract-Level Data: Demographics
description: U.S. counties and census tracts. Smallest Geographic Unit: Census tract
description: 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.