"ICE activity in 2025 & Its Impact on the Labor Market and Families" Chloe East (Colorado)

Blue room, Social Sciences & Humanities,1113

Abstract: Using newly released administrative data, this project characterizes the change in ICE activity in 2025 and compares it to the prior decade. Our results reveal that the reality of immigration enforcement diverges sharply from the public narrative: while arrests spiked at the outset of both Trump presidencies, there were significant declines in the percentage of arrested individuals with criminal convictions, with especially marked declines in 2025. Examining potential mechanisms reveals that this is driven by a change in ICE tactics, but even conditional on tactic, as arrests rose, the percent with a criminal record declined. Moreover, we find substantial heterogeneity over time and across ICE Areas of Responsibility. Taken together, our results highlight a substantial gap between political rhetoric and reality. 

We then match these changes to survey data to investigate the impacts on immigrants’ outcomes. We find that immigrants remaining in the U.S. are less likely to work in the face of heightened ICE arrests. There are no compensating positive effects on the labor supply of U.S.-born workers. This is part of a broader project studying the effect of ICE activity in Trump 2.0 in as close to real-time as possible. 
 
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Event Category

Public Finance-Labor