The Noncitizen Penalty in U.S. Federal Courts: Differences in Punishment by Region of Citizenship

Abstract

Previous literature has found that noncitizens are punished in U.S. federal courts more severely than U.S. citizens for offenses that are legally equivalent, though less is known about variation in the noncitizen effect depending on the defendant’s nation of citizenship. Using United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) federal courts data from 2018 to 2020, we analyze group differences in the noncitizen penalty across regions of national origin. We draw from literature on group threat and the focal concerns perspective to guide our expectations. We find that noncitizens from all regions except Asia and North/West Europe have higher odds of being incarcerated compared with U.S. citizens, and noncitizens from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Africa receive longer sentence lengths than U.S. citizens. Implications concerning the theoretical mechanisms relevant to the noncitizen penalty are discussed.