The Economic Cost of DHS Attacks on Immigrants

Thanks so much, Jen, and welcome everyone. It is really great to see this kind of turnout, uh especially in light of today's Supreme Court ruling allowing for the end of temporary protected status and some humanitarian protections for some migrants. I I know we're all going to be um digging into what that means for people in our communities all across the country, but it is heartening to see folks from all across the country join us today. It gives me some hope that we're going to have the kind of solidarity and people power we're going to need to turn the page on this era that we're in and to end the kinds of enforcement actions that we see today through the Trump administration. There has been irreparable harm done to families and communities across the country, and it's been intentionally done in cruel, inhumane, violent, and racist ways. Um And you know, these morally republic repugnant attacks on immigrants also come with substantial economic costs, costs that are mounting, and we're going to dive into that topic today with our two speakers as they lay out their really important and timely work to document more of the damage being done to workers, to businesses, and the broader economy, including a case study in Minneapolis, and I will add a few details about what's happening here in the district as well. So, we're going to start with a few opening remarks from each of us. Uh the And then the conversation will start with sort of the national picture, we'll narrow into the local, and then we'll jump into questions that uh many of you sent in ahead of time, and we'll um have folks answering questions that come through the Q&A in real time. We may have time to take some of those live as well. So, with that, let's get started with Chloe. As you heard, Chloe East is associate professor of economics at the University of Colorado Boulder and the vice president of her union, United Campus Workers Colorado. And she has been studying US immigration policy and its economic effects for over a decade and is going to present us some of her new research. So, let me hand it to you, Chloe. >> Thank you so much, Erica. Thank you all for being here. I am very excited to share my work with you on this topic even though it is a a fairly depressing topic. And I will say that I am I see a lot of people from Texas in the chat. So, I'm just going to flag that I actually even though I live in Denver in in Canyon, Texas right now in between Amarillo and Lubbock on a road trip from Austin where I'm from back to Denver. So, good to see lots of folks from that area here. So, I'm going to share some slides just to guide the conversation. Um, I have sent a request to share my slides. Sorry, I should have checked that before getting in. I'm assuming you can see them. Um, all right. So, as Erica said, Do you want to see my slides actually before I dive in? Okay, good. Um, so as Erica said, I have been studying immigration policy including ICE activity um for over a decade and actually started studying this topic focused on the Obama administration. And the current work that I'm doing right now is joined with some fantastic people, Caitlin Cutler, Ellie Austin Hooker, Adam Sawyer, and Jenna So, I'm just going to dive in here a couple of papers that I've been working on recently and kind of set the stage for the research that I've been doing. So, I just wanted to give a brief history of kind of how we got to where we are in terms of um what one might call immigration enforcement, but what I'm increasingly calling ICE activity and not immigration enforcement. And we'll sort of talk about why that is as we go through the webinar. But this just gives you a sense about the number of people removed from the US year over year from 2003 through 2024. Orange are border removals, blue are interior removals. And you can see um why I have previously studied the Obama administration in this graph because um prior to the current moment, that was when we had uh the largest number of removals from the US, especially from people who were already living in the US, those interior removals. So we can talk a little bit about how what is happening today is different than that, but I kind of wanted to flag that this is a a trend that we've been seeing for a while in the US um that we've been kind of building to to today. So to give some more context for what we're seeing in the second Trump administration, I'm going to talk about a paper that I just got accepted at PNAS um which is looking at ICE arrests during Trump's first and second terms. Um and I think the link to that paper will be posted in the chat. So very briefly, there's a lot I could talk about in this paper, but very briefly um I'll talk about the scale of ICE arrests we see in this Trump administration compared to the prior Trump administration. So to do so, I'm going to show you these two graphs here. Um they include about the year and a half after the first Trump inauguration on the left and a year and a half after the second Trump inauguration on the right. Um so the horizontal axis here is time relative to inauguration, which is shown in the red line. Um so the main thing to highlight here is that while we did see a spike in the number of arrests in the first Trump administration, the spike we're seeing in the second is truly unprecedented, even unprecedented relative to the first Obama administration. Um and I know we'll talk some more about these particular spikes, but basically overall we've seen about a 200% increase in arrests in this administration. Um then the next thing I'll talk about briefly is who is being arrested by ICE? And of course we can talk about this in lots of different ways which I'm sure we will, but to start I'll talk about this in the sense of um who is being arrested who has a criminal conviction. So these are the same two graphs I'm showing you before. Um but the added to the black line I was going to show you the green line which corresponds to the right hand side axis. And this shows you the percent of people who are arrested by ICE who have a criminal conviction. And again you can see that what we're seeing in the second Trump administration is really unprecedented even compared to the first Trump administration. We're at a pretty much a new low in um the lack of targeting people who have a criminal conviction. We're at about only 30% of people who are arrested by ICE today who have a criminal conviction. Um so then briefly I'll talk about economic impacts and then we'll want to spend some more time talking about this. Um I have studied this in the current um administration in Trump 2.0 which uh that research is out as an NBR working paper which was posted in the chat and then I've also studied this in the past in the Obama administration. So just to kind of give you the the highlight um you know the the broad shape of what I'm saying, uh this graph is showing you the change in the employment rates of likely undocumented immigrants on the left hand side bars and US born workers on the right hand side bars. And what we find is that as the number of ICE arrests increase in a local area, the employment rate of both undocumented workers and US foreign workers falls. And we'll talk about the mechanisms for why this why this is as we get into the discussion, but broadly what we're seeing is no positive impacts of the ice campaign in Trump 2.0 for US foreign workers. We also look at wages and see no evidence of improvements in wages in Trump 2.0 for either immigrant workers or US foreign workers. So, I will go ahead and stop sharing now and look forward to the questions and discussion. Thank you. >> Thanks, Chloe. Thanks for giving us a little bit of a basis for our conversation and we're going to hear a little bit also from Aaron. Aaron Sojourner is deputy director of research at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, which is a private, non-profit, non-partisan, independent research organization that's been studying policy related to issues of employment and unemployment since it's founding in 1945. And Aaron formerly worked as senior economist for labor at the White House Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration and the Trump one administration. And he lives in Minneapolis and so that is where his research takes place and I'm going to hand it over to you now, Aaron. >> Thanks so much Erica and EPI for putting this together and all of you in the audience for spending your time with us to learn about this. It's really important issues um and appreciate your attention. So, you guys see the slides? Uh >> [clears throat] >> yeah, okay. So, this is joint work with um Aaron Rosenthal who's research director at the North Star Policy Action which is like um what part of the Earn Affiliate Network uh based in Minnesota. Um and basically I'm going to tell you about some research we've been doing to document the impact of Operation Metro Surge, which was the DHS enforcement or DHS activity that took place in Minnesota uh over January, February uh of this year. Um just to give you some context uh the H this Operation Metro Surge was very intense. Uh I'm sure everybody knows uh roughly about that. Um this is a from a newspaper article from the Star Tribune, the Minnesota Star Tribune. It's based on uh data crowdsourced kind of data um that you can find in the link there. But basically it compares like community reports of enforcement act of uh agent activity um in LA, in Chicago, and in the Twin Cities. Um and what you can see is that like the scale between LA and the Twin Cities is similar, but what to know about that is that LA has, you know, six times more people than the Twin Cities. They boosted the number of agents here by um something like 16 times the usual amount. Uh and you know, so the the the black lines here scale that um LA activity down by six times. The black line here scales the Chicago activity down by 2.7 times. So, roughly you can think of those lines as comparable to the uh Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities. That's how much activity was happening, you know, um it many times more intense enforcement activity uh or agent activity in the Twin Cities over those months than in other places. The agents count maybe was similar, but just like applied against a um a much smaller community. Um what we have been trying to understand and and estimate is how did that change the labor market um in the MSP Minneapolis-Saint Paul metro area. How did it affect the labor market in the state of Minnesota? We've done a couple pieces of analysis. I'm going to show you two. The first one's going to focus on daily data that we're able to get from a um payroll and timekeeping system called Homebase that um a lot of small businesses, retail, restaurants use to track their employees like swiping in and swiping out and getting paid every day. Um we're able to get data at the daily level for the um number of employees swiping in, the number of hours worked, uh the number of locations that had any employees swipe in uh for MSP metro area and also for other metro areas around the country. And that data is available back about 5 years and so we can uh look at how did um activity in MSP metro area change after Operation Metro Surge um started compared to uh what would have been expected based on changes we see in other other metro areas and the um it and we can do that at the daily level. And then we did separate analysis using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is much more standard uh kind of data that's collected every and published for every month um for the whole state for the leisure and hospitality industry in the state. We can measure the number of jobs, hours worked, earnings, employee earnings. And we can compare trends in Minnesota compared to trends in other states that usually are on a similar trajectory. And so the the basic thing we're doing in all in both of these situations is looking at which metro areas or which states in the past years track Minnesota's trends and then using that as like a good comparison group for what would have happened in Minnesota if there wasn't an Operation Metro Surge. And then we can see what did happen in Minnesota with Operation Metro Surge. And we're going to measure the effect of Operation Metro Surge as the difference between what would have happened based on what happened in similar uh basket of states uh or metros and what did happen in Minnesota. So, this is like the first set of results. This is for um MSP metro using that home-based data. And what we what we did was like look at all the years leading up to this and then we can estimate at the daily level like what how is it different in Minnesota in MSP compared to what would it be expected um given this other data and the relationships we typically see. And what we can see is that in the months leading up to Operation Metro Surge Minne- MSP looked just like you'd expect. There's no difference. These blue dots are very similar to to the regular line. But once the agent surge starts, you see uh the number of hours worked falling in MSP and relative to other places. And so we see um you know, a 2% decline overall in the number of hours worked in uh MSP. We see a 3% decline in employees working. Uh we see a 2% decline in the number of businesses operating. This is for the whole, you know, multi-county area. Uh [clears throat] and that persists, you know, this dot down here is the day of the general strike that took place. Uh so, it makes sense that that was a big uh decline in the in hours worked. Um and look, you you've read the news stories. I don't need to describe what happened it it here, but basically like people were scared to go out in public, especially people of color, especially uh because the DHS agents were you know, uh targeting people based on the color of their skin, based on language, uh and it made it unsafe for people to go outside. It made it unsafe for people to go to work, to go to restaurants, to go to church, to go to uh mosque, uh and um you know, it was very uh new kind of risk in the community. And what we saw was people pulling back from all these activities uh be to manage those risks. Uh and it was very uh disruptive. Um if you take that uh number of impact on the number of hours and you try to put that into dollars, what it means, like we did a very conservative estimate, uh what it means is workers in in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area lost about over over a hundred million dollars in wages. And like in COVID times, people also had a risk from going in public. People also had a risk from going to work. People also lost earning opportunities, lost wages, but it was a big difference. The federal government was sending a lot of support to families and businesses at that time. Here, the federal government was sending the risk. Was sending the danger and was not sending any support and hasn't sent any support. In fact, has been trying to cut off supports. Um we also looked at the leisure and hospitality industry for the state. Um and what we found here is similar like in the year leading up to Operation Metro Surge, Minnesota's leisure and hospitality industry looked just like you'd expect based on prior data, but once the operation starts, we see this decline. Uh we estimate that it caused a loss of about 4,600 jobs, 5% of total hours in the whole state's leisure and hospitality industry, $71 million in the whole state's leisure and hospitality industry lost earnings. Um I'll just flash this up here. I won't go through it. There's a lot of reasons why um you you can dig into this if you want. A lot of reasons to it. Like the simple story is, "Oh, immigrants are competition for American workers." That's wrong in That's true in maybe to some extent, but it's also very incomplete and wrong in a lot of ways that are really important and uh maybe overwhelm that simple story. So, that's what I got. Thank you. >> Thanks so much, Aaron. I think that's um just incredible the impact. I think we all know there's um more than the economic impact, but it's important to have the data and the analysis to show that this sort of talking point of the Trump administration that this is somehow going to lead to more jobs for American workers uh for US citizen workers um that we need to be dispelling that myth. So, thank you for that. Uh you know, we don't have this level of analysis here for the district um but as another of the front lines of escalating attacks on on democracy, on immigrants, on rights, I am feeling confident that we have probably experienced some of the same kinds of effects on our own economy. DC is home to about 95,000 immigrants. That's 14% of our local population. Um about 47,000 were non-citizens. Um about 25,000 are estimated undocumented. Immigrants are 16% of our workforce, uh account for 15% of economic output, are 21% of business owners, um and are contributing in all kinds of ways including tax contributions from undocumented immigrants, which are about 74 million a year. So, you know, the Trump administration's federal occupation of DC, which has been ongoing, has been quite damaging in all kinds of ways. It's meant an unprecedented an intense level of enforcement, um removing people from their families, their communities, their workplaces. Um this all started last August when Trump declared a crime emergency without evidence, of course. Um that allowed him to basically infiltrate the local police force uh and brought a surge of National Guard to the district. Um and we've been occupied ever since. We have a new surge right now because of the 250th anniversary of the country. And uh so, we've got 5,000 National Guard here uh today. And I would just say that in a geographically small place like DC, we're talking like 68 square miles. It's we've all felt and seen it just up close and personal, right? The um the National Guard, the ICE uh raids and um attacks. And really, we've got the entire alphabet soup of federal agents that are terrorizing communities here. Um they are right actively riding along with MPD officers on just every day uh kinds of stops. And um we've seen them go after school employees, show up at our schools. They've come to our child care centers uh and terrorize child care workers. They've racially profiled people in work trucks and uh you know, causing people to flee. They've uh come into our restaurants. They've arrested street vendors, all of it in plain sight. It's generating a ton of fear. And as was mentioned, when people are really scared, they retreat from daily life. And the And the fear isn't just from undocumented immigrants because of the way this is rolling out. It is also folks who do have status, and it's folks who are just black and brown and are afraid of all the the law enforcement on the streets. And so, um you know, I And I would I would be remiss to not mention that the attack on immigrants and the level of enforcement here really greatly exacerbates the already troubling interactions of law enforcement with DC's non-immigrant black communities, right? Including arrests that have led to black residents being shot at or killed. So, um you know, that's our status here. And because we lack full rights and representation, because the federal government ultimately has control over what happens here, we really just don't have the same tools as other places. We don't have the same kind of legal recourse um that other people's have peop- other other states, other places have to really kind of provide some buffer or try to intervene. And so, we know that there's a lot of harm happening here. Um and you know, on the economic front we think there are really big risks to critical set sectors um with large percentage of immigration workers. So like our child care industry, our health care industry. We have a lot of nurses and doctors, our hospitality industry for sure, which we really are relying on right now especially amidst all the DOJ layoffs that have led to a lot of federal workers losing their jobs. Um and you know, I think all of this all of these things combined the the immigration attack attacks on immigrants and others, the layoffs and the other kinds of federal tax we're having on our budget and on our taxes, um how we raise and use our local resources is having a downward pressure on our economy. We're in our own special local recession. So um you know, we see this sort of playing out in a lot of different ways. Um and so it I am uh really glad to have more research that we can be using to make the case that this is um absolutely abhorrent uh status situation that we're living through but also one that is damaging in the short and long term for our economic well-being in this country. So I want to jump back in with Chloe for a minute and you know, you talked about how the deportation agenda is actually harming US-born workers. I wonder if you can just say more about that and how that happens, how that works. >> Yes, absolutely. Um I know there were some audio issues before. Is it a little bit better now? Okay. Uh apologies. So um I want to pick up actually on something that Aaron's saying in his um presentation, which was the idea, you know, the sort of um myth that we're told by politicians and others that uh there's one substitution between um immigrants who arrive to the US and want to work and US born um workers. Sorry, I was looking at the about the audio. Um so I think that my research and other research has really shown that that is a myth and that there are a couple reasons for why that's a myth. Um the first is that the types of industries and the types of jobs that uh US born workers work in and immigrants, and especially on undocumented immigrants work in are from uh shown as in recent in the chat. Uh because of this, um when immigrants come to the US, they are generally not um taking jobs that US born workers would otherwise take. And what I have shown even sort of beyond that is that the jobs that immigrants take help US born workers um continue to work. Uh they're actually complementary to the jobs that US born workers generally take. And so I think the best example of this that we're probably um all familiar with is um the idea or sorry, I'm trying to fix the audio here. Um let me do one thing and see if that makes it better. Okay, I'm going to try that. Um probably an example we're all familiar familiar with is a construction site. So when you think about workers at a construction site that you've driven past or worked at yourself, um most of the construction site laborers, the sort of most manual tasks are done by immigrants themselves. And then um the other tasks like uh electricians, uh architects, construction site managers are done by US-born workers. And so when construction companies actually have a hard time finding immigrant workers to be construction site laborers, they build fewer homes, the research has shown, and they hire fewer US-born workers. And so there's not just this Oh, good. I'm glad the audio improved. There's not just this um lack of substitution, but there's actually a complementarity between immigrants and US-born workers um on the whole. Um I do also want to highlight some um good research on the Obama administration that shows that um immigration enforcement uh weakens workers' rights, weakens workers' bargaining power, and leads to an increase in on-the-job injuries, and increase in minimum wage violations from employers. And so while the previous story I was telling you about construction site laborers might lead you to think like this is um this is leading us to down a path we don't want to go down as labor organizers, I think there's other really good research um that shows that um immigration enforcement is actually really harmful for all workers' bargaining power um sort of regardless of the jobs that they do. Um so that's one story uh or one sort of mechanism through which um deportations are actually bad for US-born workers. The other thing I just want to highlight and then maybe we could pass uh to Erin is um that especially what we're seeing right now uh where ICE is acting so indiscriminately and um so widespread um across cities, it's having this kind of new negative economic impact that we maybe haven't seen before in prior administrations that Aaron was sort of referencing where people I mean even US foreign people are afraid to leave their homes and Erica you're referencing this too because it might lead to an interaction with ice and you know lots of other things that people are trying to avoid and so we see in our work that that is also causing US foreign people to stay home from their jobs because of that fear. >> Thank you. Yeah, Aaron do you want to jump in on that too and maybe >> I mean the thing I'll just draw out I I agree with Chloe's message there. There's a lot of other channels that that can generate these positive spillovers from having um immigrants here and author and working so um yeah, we we can talk about those if people want but one thing I'll just highlight is the shift away from targeted enforcement to mass deportation is like a big important shift that in its it's it's quite different because you know the public is spending public resources uh going out um and moving people and it used to be you know when it's targeted by definition you're like assessing possibilities you're looking for the highest benefit sort of people to to to go after people who've maybe hurt members in the community people who are convicted of murder or rape or things like this like the worst of the worst that's targeted enforcement in the extreme uh you know obviously it's like sometimes it's less than that but uh when you shift to mass deportation, now you're you're not targeting the worst of the worst. Now you're you're targeting people who by definition didn't hurt people in the community. People who are being productive, who who are getting along with and contributing, who are following all the rules, who are like here and contributing to their local community, to the to their local economy, and like using public resources to up to attack them, uproot them, remove them from the their community, it and our community, it that is damaging to the economy. That is damaging uh, to the the community. Like just almost by def- like it it it it's hard to um, shift away from targeted enforcement to mass deporta- to mass deportation, like the sign said, without going after productive con- you know, people who are contributing great things to the to the community and the economy, so. >> Yeah, actually, I'm going to insert an extra little question here. Um, you know, cuz I I see uh, Chloe that you put in the chat uh, a paper on school attendance and you know, we're talking about removing productive members of society from from society uh, in different kinds of ways, either by actually deport- you know, detaining and deporting them or keeping them from doing what they would otherwise be doing. I wonder what you both think about sort of the longer term effects of this. Um, you know, you're measuring sort of what's happening in the here and now, but I wonder about the longer term implications. Either of you can jump in. Go ahead, Chloe. >> Yeah, absolutely. Um, so I put out a report um, that is uh, linked in the chat earlier this year looking at um, children in mixed status families, particularly teens in mixed status families to see if they are increasing their work and decreasing their school attendance to kind of make up for loss of parental income either because their parents were detained or deported themselves or because their parents are afraid to work. And what we showed is that there was a striking increase in 2025 in teen work in mixed status families and decrease in school attendance that that accompanies that. And then there's some other work on younger children that I posted in the chat that shows that school attendance has also gone down. And I think this relates to some work that is happening by other social scientists that I'm not as involved with but that is arguing that having a parent who's impacted by ICE by immigration enforcement should really be considered a very dramatic and life-altering event and should be up there with having a parent lose a very steady job or a parent die or parents divorce. You know, it's a very traumatic event that's going to have impacts on kids for decades to come. And a lot of my other work shows that you know, what happens to children early in life really has these persistent effects on both their health and economic outcomes in the longer run. So I think we should expect to see that particularly coming from kids in the long run. >> I'll just again I agree with Chloe and I would add in the long run like if you look economists have done a lot of studies about immigration and innovation, entrepreneurship, economic growth and found consistently that immigrants are really important to America's success. It to the engine of growth and innovation and um the the things that keep America vibrant and keep America uh moving forward and a leader in the world. Uh and you know, closing down paths and w- like bulldozing paths by which uh generations of people have contributed to the American dream and generated um like avenues, not just for themselves and their families, but for other people in America, other people in the community to uh be a part of these new enterprises, new technologies, new innovations. Like it's it's very self-defeating. It's it's it's very um there's real economic harm that comes from that. And there's real like harm to our place in in the world and to our um the opportunities our children will have. So, and and we will have like right around the corner. >> Yeah. So, I mean, actually, Aaron, maybe we'll stick with you for a second. Um you know, I think we've um you know, the the attacks of DHS ICE agents, yes, other DHS agents in Minnesota um may have kind of uh receded from the headlines uh for all of us nationwide, but we know that just because things disappear from the national news, uh they doesn't mean they've stopped happening. So, I'm wondering um what you know, things look like now on the ground, what ramifications are still being felt um and you know, impacts you're seeing continue um you know, across kinds of businesses or different sectors. Just give us a little more of what's happening right now. >> Yeah, I think um it was interesting hearing you talk about DC because it sounded a lot like like a a lot of the things you were saying were very recognizable to our experiences in the Twin Cities and and in Minnesota. Um and uh yeah, it's definitely not just impacting negatively you know, people are here without authorization or whatever. Like it's impacting all anybody here all BIPOC people, like anyone with uh dark skin, anyone who looks anyone who speaks up in the wrong way, like was subject to attack, was subject to uh harassment, subject to uh coercion, physical you know, legal coercion. And you know, it's just it it's unloosing uh abusive state power in a way that I have never witnessed in my life and on a scale like I've I know that it happens uh and I'm but like it was on a scale that I have never seen. Um And so I don't know. What's it like now is uh yeah, I think we're going to see this lingering trauma in families, in kids, in you know, people missed health care, people will have lingering health issues, mental health issues from trauma, like um uh so again, like people are like at the same time, the community really did rally in a very decentralized like leaderful way people have said. Like I can't remember the name of the person who said that but like that was a very accurate and like there was a lot of uh solidarity and mutual aid and community self-defense and like it was um very positive it it in many ways but it was awful like it was awful in many ways that this was necessary. Uh and so I think people are still trying to recover from you know the the lost income the lost health care the lost education and I don't see those things like snapping back quickly like those are going to be scars um that people uh carry forward for a long time I think. >> Yeah, I do think this is going to be you know you you can't fully predict what the uh future's going to hold. I think we've all disabused ourselves of the notion that we can like know what tomorrow's going to bring um and you know knowing that the damage has been really severe and that the trust is um broken for sure um so I think you know it'll be really important to be kind of documenting over time like what what are the outcomes of all of this. I wonder um if either of you wants to answer this question from the audience um and it is a little bit about the the long-term as well as that the deportations and immigration um actions are going to harm our ability to fund Medicare and Social Security and there's some interest in hearing how that would be problematic um and how we could quantify some of that. I also, you know, think there's a question here about what are some of the other costs of detaining immigrants and migrants and asylum seekers um and sort of in any system there's somebody who's benefiting. So, like who's benefiting at this moment from those kinds of actions? Um so, I'm going to throw those two questions out there and uh I don't know Chloe if you want to jump in first. >> Sure. Um I don't have a great number off the top of my head for Social Security and Medicare, but other economists have written on that and I can post some links in the chat about that. Um uh essentially um well, especially undocumented immigrants um generally pay into Social Security and Medicare and don't receive any benefits um from those programs. Um for immigrants with some kind of legal status this is a little bit more complicated, but most estimates um suggest that in a you know, taking a long run view um immigrants especially their children are net fiscal positives. Um so, I can link to some of that research. Um so, certainly I think we will expect that all of this is going to be harmful for Social Security and Medicare. Um Do you want to jump in? I have thoughts about the sort of who is profiting off of this, but Erin do you want to jump in on sort of other economic costs for >> Well, I'd yeah, I'd just second that and say that um like from a human development perspective like we in it we invest in children. You know, for 18 years we at least you know, we're we're um educating and feeding and housing and we do that in our families and we do that uh in our public communities and you know, immigrants, adult immigrants who come here, like other countries made those investments and now they're coming and they're um contributing to our economy and they're paying into our tax systems and our yeah, uh public benefit systems. And um you know, they they're making important contribu- valuable contributions in most cases. Uh and it's um >> [clears throat] >> it's it's uh yeah, there's real cost to like throwing that away and uh attacking them and um so, I'll just stop there and throw it back to you to talk about the other thing and come back on that. >> Um sounds good. So, I I do want to flag I do think it's an important point to note and something I've been thinking a lot about um you know, in this moment when we have we have done immigration enforcement, we have done mass deportations in this country before. The research is clear even before this period, you know, what are the economic consequences of that. So, what are the things that are keeping people um you know, why do people still support this? Um and I think that racism, which has been mentioned today, uh is a real reason. Um but I also think that there is a real part of our economy that is profiting off of uh mass detention and deportation and that that's worth acknowledging um as well. Um I'll put a link to a really amazing book that I'm reading right now, um written by some geographers, um about the both um revenue generating that uh state governments and local governments can do uh, because of immigration detention, uh, but also the private companies that are profiting off of immigration uh, detention. And uh, I think we're seeing this even more blatantly in this administration. So, in um, the Denver area where I live, uh, the we have one of the largest detention centers in the country, which is led by the GEO Group. Uh, and their stock value rose astronomically after Trump was uh, elected president. They get about half of their revenue from the federal government uh, to do immigration detention. Uh, and one of their previous executives is now the head or has a leadership role in ICE. Um, so we're really seeing the sort of revolving door and sort of impacts of money within the detention industrial complex, I think, right now in a way we haven't seen before, even though this has been something that motivates uh, these decisions for a long time, I think. >> Yeah, I'll just I'll just add that you know, if we don't have enough oversight and accountability, it's hard to say how big and, you know, the extent of these problems are. Um, but outsourcing like coercive public power to private entities, to profit-maximizing entities, it like invites a lot of abuse. It it if you're in the business, if you're maximizing profit in the business of jailing people, of detaining people, you have really strong incentives to push to for depri- deprivation and forced labor. Like, th- there's just no other in- like, so it's very hard to keep those incentives at bay and to like run uh, uh, uh, such an an ethical or like human rights consistent uh version of that. There's just like so much uh profit pressure pushing you to cut corners and to uh do the wrong thing. >> Yes, all the ways that we incentivize exploitation. [laughter] Um I wonder I'm going to throw a couple more questions out there. I We have had some folks who are interested in what the um economic damage has been for farmers or and like what the impact has been of the deport mass deportation agenda in rural areas. I wonder if either of you have um things to say about that. Um and we also have a question about the the chilling effect of ICE enforcement or ICE attacks, ICE activity um on in migration even of uh folks with documented status who would be coming here and and what the impact of that is. So I'm uh throw those couple questions out there. Go ahead, Aaron or Chloe, if you want to start. >> Um yeah, so I actually unfortunately I don't have a great answer to the to the agriculture question. Um mostly because the data on agricultural sector is fairly hard to come by and harder to come by than on some other sectors that I've focused on and that I think Aaron's focused on too. So I think we uh together have shown that sort of the hospitality sector has been really impacted, the construction sector has been really impacted. Um in my past work I've looked at child care and shown that that's been really impacted. Um but I think we don't have great data yet really on agriculture or on rural areas unless you know of any good research on rural areas and that I don't know about. Yeah. Yeah, so unfortunately, I think we'll have to stay tuned for that analysis, but hopefully that will be coming soon. >> Yeah, I think it it the data on agricultural sector is worse and the data is it's not reported as well either because of like confidentiality in small places. So, it's it's a particularly hard sector to understand um for for using our tools. Um but it is important and I yeah, I mean, I think we can all guess the sign. Like we can all guess the direction of these things, but the exact magnitudes are are tougher to nail down. >> And um and then in terms >> Oh, go ahead. Oh, go ahead. >> Go ahead. No, no, no. >> Well, I was going to pivot a little bit um to to the chilling effect. So, one number that I didn't actually get to say in my slides, but I do want to say and relates to the chilling effect point although in a slightly different way is that we show in our NBR working paper that for every one arrest, there's a reduction of um seven immigrant workers who still live in the US. So, this is not immigrant workers who have been physically removed, but these are immigrant workers who are still living in the US and that's what we argue because of a chilling effect. Um and then we actually find that for every arrest, there are nine fewer US born workers. So, the effect on US born workers is even larger than the effect on immigrants. Um partly I mean, they're a larger population. So, um so that's part of it. But uh I think that's an important thing to note. And then for what we're seeing for in-migration, I mean, I think it's at a historic low uh that most of us I mean, I know I would not have predicted. I also wouldn't have predicted uh the ICE activity to be as extreme as it has been. Um but we are certainly seeing um seeing that. And I I mean, just as on a personal note, I see that with my own students. Uh many of my international students do not want to stay in the US, um which is a new phenomena. Um they if they're applying to graduate school, they do not want to stay in the US. Or if they're you know, they're looking for a job, they they want to go elsewhere. Yes. >> Well, thank you so much to both of you for sharing your research, for doing the research, for sharing your research, for helping us to document um what we know are sort of devastating effects of the the Trump administration's actions against immigrants. Um we know there's more to come, um and it's going to be so important for all of us to have shared understanding of what the what's at risk, um and um and to be thinking together about like I said, turning the page and what we need to do next. I know there's lots of brilliant minds out there thinking about what a more humane immigration system should look like, and it um undoubtedly would be one that actually buoys our economy, not um drains it. Um so, I want to thank you all, and I'm going to hand it back over to Jen to close us out. I know we're at the hour. >> Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much to you, Erica and Aaron and Chloe. And thank to every thank you to everyone who joined us for a weighty topic that is so big, we all need to come together to address it. Um I will return you to real life and ask you to take 2 minutes to fill out our our survey, and we look forward to hopefully coming back to you again with better news soon. Stay strong everyone. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Take care. >> Thank you so much.