Over the past year, Tennessee’s immigration crime reports have become a political Rorschach test. Supporters cite them as evidence that the state is finally being transparent about public safety. Critics argue the numbers are being misused to stigmatize immigrant communities. Both sides point to the same reports and reach very different conclusions.
That disagreement has less to do with ideology than with how the data itself is being read.
Tennessee now has two years of state-mandated data on crimes involving people reported as not lawfully present, and almost no agreement on what those numbers actually show. The problem isn’t the figures themselves. It’s that the reports are being treated as conclusions when they were designed as raw inputs.
The reporting requirement was born out of legislative demand for transparency, not statistical clarity, and the first two annual reports were released into an environment primed to turn partial data into definitive claims. Before the debate hardens any further, it’s worth slowing down long enough to understand what the state actually required agencies to report and just as importantly, what it did not.
This piece is not about whether immigration policy is right or wrong, nor is it an argument about crime. It is about how Tennessee’s immigration crime reports were constructed, what they measure, and why reading them carelessly, whether to exaggerate or dismiss their significance, undermines both public trust and sound policymaking. Before the numbers are used to support sweeping claims, they deserve to be read on their own terms, with an understanding of the legal framework that produced them.
Why This Data Exists at All
In 2023, the General Assembly enacted Tennessee Code Annotated § 4-1-425, directing state and local law enforcement agencies to submit standardized reports when an individual could not be verified as lawfully present at the time they were charged or convicted of a criminal offense. Agencies were legally obligated to submit this data. They were not asked to analyze it, contextualize it, or explain why the encounters occurred. Their role was limited to reporting.
That distinction matters because the reports are now being read as something more than they were designed to be. The statute mandated transparency about a narrow category of encounters. It did not authorize the data to serve as a proxy for criminal behavior, immigration trends, or policy outcomes.
What the Reports Measure and What They Don’t
Much of the public misunderstanding stems from collapsing different stages of the criminal justice process into a single conclusion. Arrest, charge, and conviction are not interchangeable. An arrest reflects probable cause. A charge reflects a prosecutorial determination that a case can proceed. A conviction follows adjudication in court.
The PC 998 reports capture individuals reported by agencies as not lawfully present at the time of a charge or conviction, based on administrative verification processes that vary by department. They do not establish final immigration status. They do not determine guilt. They do not reflect sentencing outcomes. They record a moment in a legal process, not its resolution.
This is not a semantic distinction. It is the line between what the data shows and what readers assume it implies.
How Complete the Data Is
The scope of reporting expanded significantly between the first and second reports. The 2024 report, covering October through December, included submissions from 73 of Tennessee’s 95 counties. The 2025 report included submissions from 94 counties over a full calendar year.
Even then, reporting consistency varied. Some agencies submitted data every month. Others reported sporadically. A missing report does not equal zero incidents; it means no submission was recorded. The reports themselves caution against interpreting absence of data as absence of activity.
These limitations are not evidence of bad faith. They reflect the reality of implementing a new statewide reporting requirement across agencies with different systems, staffing levels, and submission practices.
Comparing 2024 and 2025 Without Forcing Conclusions
The raw numbers differ substantially, but so do the reporting windows. The 2024 report documented roughly 2,700 reports over three months, listing approximately 3,800 charges, including 447 violent offenses. The 2025 report documented more than 11,000 reports across a full year, listing roughly 21,600 charges, including 2,183 violent offenses.
These figures describe reporting output, not behavior. The 2025 report includes monthly data for October, November, and December, but it does not separately aggregate those months to mirror the narrower window used in the 2024 report. Treating the two datasets as directly comparable without acknowledging that difference creates false precision.
The responsible verbs here are limited: reporting expanded; participation increased; totals rose alongside coverage. Anything beyond that requires analysis the reports were never designed to provide.
The Risk of Oversimplification
Immigration and crime are not abstract topics. They involve real people, real harm, and real fear. That makes discipline more important, not less. Exaggerating what the reports show undermines credibility. Ignoring them undermines accountability. Responsible analysis requires resisting both impulses.
These reports do not prove criminality, nor do they disprove concern. They document encounters under a specific administrative rule. Anything more must be earned through careful, longitudinal analysis that controls for scope, time, and legal process.
What This Data Can Responsibly Inform
Used properly, the reports can help improve reporting consistency, identify data gaps, and inform future studies designed to measure trends over time. They can support transparency without being asked to settle questions they were never meant to answer.
What they cannot responsibly support are broad claims about criminal behavior, causal assertions about immigration policy, or conclusions untethered from legal stages. Arrest is not charge. Charge is not conviction. Reporting is not adjudication.
Data as a Starting Point, Not a Verdict
Tennessee chose transparency. That choice carries obligations — not only for agencies that report, but for readers and policymakers who interpret the results. Facts matter most when debates are heated. Accuracy is not a partisan preference; it is a civic responsibility.
If the state is going to publish data, the public owes it more than reflexive conclusions. It owes it careful reading and the restraint to let evidence mature before demanding answers it cannot yet give.