The ICE Effect: How Immigration Enforcement Affects the Economy and Jobs

When ICE arrests someone, this often removes a worker from the community.

Chilling effects. ICE activity causes immigrants who remain in the country to feel fearful about participating in their usual activities — including going to work — because they’re worried they could have an interaction with ICE. This leads other immigrants to reduce their work in response to ICE.

Complements, not substitutes. Unauthorized immigrant workers are complementary to U.S.-born workers: having immigrants in the workplace supports U.S. jobs rather than competing with them.

Unauthorized immigrant workers tend to work in different occupations than U.S.-born workers. Some common examples in the U.S.:

• Heightened immigration enforcement makes immigrant workers feel more vulnerable to deportation, creating a large body of workers who are more easily exploitable in the workplace. That is bad for all workers, because it reduces their collective bargaining power.
• Research shows that during mass deportations there are more unreported minimum wage violations, as well as more safety violations and injuries.

Enforcement reduces local demand.

• Deporting individuals directly removes consumers from local economies.
• Chilling effects reduce demand even from those who remain in the country.
• Some early evidence shows that even U.S.-born individuals, who have not traditionally been affected by ICE activity, are choosing to stay home more to avoid ICE. [1] [2]