The Trump administration’s immigration surge into US cities last year resulted in 668,000 job losses, creating a “chilling effect” that pervaded local economies, hurt businesses and affected American-born workers, according to a report from the Brookings Institution.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement campaign adopted “shock and awe” tactics that were broader and far more visible than previous enforcement efforts, including one started under former president George W. Bush in 2008 and continued under former president Barack Obama, said the authors of the study, released on Friday.
In the 86 cities that saw the sharpest rise in ICE arrests, they found roughly 13 lost jobs associated with each excess arrest. Industries that traditionally employ a large share of undocumented migrants, like construction, saw the biggest impact.
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But employment in sectors like arts and entertainment, where few immigrants work, also fell sharply. The authors said that is because businesses cut staff as people stop going out when ICE raids dominate the news.
“Enforcement at this scale and speed – visible, shocking, designed to produce fear beyond the directly targeted population – destroys jobs, disrupts businesses that Americans own and run, and depresses the local economies in which Americans live and work,” Marcela Escobari, Ian Seyal and Paul Beach wrote in the report.
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The White House did not immediately return a request for comment on the report.