Jupiter family comets in near-Earth orbits: Are some of them interlopers from the asteroid belt?

•We analyze the orbit evolution of Jupiter family comets in near-Earth orbits.•We find that some comets move on stable orbits like near-Earth asteroids.•The source region of these more stable comets might be in the outer asteroid belt.•They are potential candidates to produce visible meteor showers.

We analyze a sample of 58 Jupiter family comets (JFCs) in near-Earth orbits, defined as those whose perihelion distances at the time of discovery were qdisc<1.3qdisc<1.3 au. In our definition JFCs have Tisserand parameters 2