World
ICE Raids Are Hurting US Workers Too, Economist Chloe East Warns
Heightened Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity during the second Trump administration is triggering wider labour market disruptions across the United States, according to new observations shared by Chloe East, an economist who has studied immigration enforcement and employment trends for more than a decade.
“What are the impacts of heightened ICE activity that we’re seeing in the second Trump administration on the labour market?” East asked while outlining the findings of her latest work. “I had done work in the past on previous mass deportation campaigns, so I had a sense about what we might see. But I wanted to understand, in reality, with the data that is currently available, what are we seeing in terms of labour market impacts?”
East, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, said the numbers emerging from communities witnessing increased ICE enforcement activity suggest the effects stretch well beyond arrests and deportations themselves.
“On average, in an area that has experienced heightened ICE activity, there is about 1,300 fewer immigrants in the community because of arrest, detention and deportation,” she said. “But beyond that, about 7,500 more immigrants are dropping out of the labour market because of fear of leaving their home to go to work might lead them to interact with ICE and get deported.”
‘Fear Is Affecting Workforce Participation’
East said the fallout is increasingly visible among immigrants who continue to remain in the United States but are withdrawing from economic activity because of enforcement fears.
“It’s reducing the employment rate of immigrants who are remaining in the U.S. due to fear of leaving their house,” she explained. But the impact, she argued, is not limited to migrant communities alone.
“It’s reducing the employment rate of U.S.-born workers who work in sectors that are often or have been historically reliant on immigrant workers,” East added, challenging the assumption that mass deportation policies automatically improve opportunities for American citizens.
According to East, much of the conventional political argument surrounding deportation policies is based on what she described as an overly simplistic economic understanding.
“The conventional wisdom is really coming from a very simple economic model where we think if we remove one worker from the labour market through detention or deportation, that’s going to free up one job for a U.S.-born worker,” she said.
“And so mass deportations overall will improve labour market opportunities for U.S.-born workers. But the reality is that’s not how our labour market works. It’s much more flexible and dynamic than that.”
Construction Sector Seeing ‘Largest Impacts’
East pointed specifically to the construction industry as one of the sectors facing the sharpest disruption during the second Trump administration’s enforcement push.
“When we’re thinking about the construction sector, which is actually where we find the largest impacts in the second Trump administration, we see that immigrants take the more physically demanding seasonal jobs,” she said.
She noted that migrant workers are often employed as construction site labourers, while U.S.-born workers typically occupy supervisory or technical positions such as electricians, architects and construction managers.
“And when there’s an increase in ICE activity, it makes it hard for construction companies to find construction site labourers,” East said. “So they actually reduce their production overall. They reduce the number of new builds that they do.”
That slowdown, she added, eventually feeds into hiring decisions affecting American workers themselves. “It reduces hiring of electricians, roofers and construction site managers, which are jobs typically taken by U.S.-born workers,” East explained.
Summing up the broader implications of aggressive deportation policies, East argued that the economic burden eventually reaches ordinary households and local economies. “Mass deportations actually harm the labour market outcomes,” she said, “but also just pocketbooks of everyday Americans.”
