Secure Communities: Broad Impacts of Increased Immigration Enforcement

By Chloe East of University of Colorado Denver. Excerpts:

"The impacts of increased immigration enforcement can extend beyond the direct effects on the immigrants deported and their immediate families. Qualitative studies show that in addition to direct effects on immigrants detained and deported, Secure Communities had broader “chilling effects” due to fear induced by the policy. For instance, people reported being less likely to interact with authorities for fear of being asked about their immigration status or about the status of people they know. This could be due to mistrust of local law enforcement and government more broadly, possibly due to the lack of targeting serious criminals and to certain demographic groups being over-represented. For example, over 40% of Latino immigrants living in several large cities in the U.S. reported thinking that police officers stop Latin American immigrants without reasonable cause, that they are afraid to leave their home, and that they feel more isolated because local law enforcement is involved with immigration enforcement (see here)."

"A policy that aims to remove undocumented individuals could be expected to decrease the participation of these workers in the labor force. Indeed, the implementation of Secure Communities in a location significantly reduced the availability of less-educated immigrant men in the local labor force — and this had negative consequences for high-skilled male citizen workers. Specifically, Annie Hines, Philip Luck, Hani Mansour, Andrea Velasquez and I find that the number of male non-citizens with a high- school degree or less (characteristics that make them most likely to be undocumented) who were employed decreased by an average of 7 percent when Secure Communities was implemented in a local area. This decline could be due to both direct removals, as well as potential “chilling effects” reducing labor force participation among those remaining in the U.S. But, the reduction in employment was not limited to immigrant men. Secure Communities exposure in a local area also reduced high-skilled citizen men’s employment in sectors that have historically relied on undocumented labor. This is likely operating through decreases in demand for high skilled workers when the supply of low skilled workers shrinks: for instance, when the supply of construction workers decreases, there is also less need for construction managers, who are more likely to be high skilled citizens. We calculate that a 1 percent decline in the employment share of likely undocumented male immigrants is associated with a 0.12 percent decline in the employment rate of male citizens. Secure Communities may have increased employment for low-skilled Hispanic citizen men who are closest substitutes for likely undocumented men, however we find that the net effect of Secure Communities on all male workers in a local area is negative.  

Another pathway through which Secure Communities negatively impacted high-skilled citizen workers is through the change in the price of household service workers. Female undocumented immigrants are over-represented in household service work (such as housekeeping and childcare), and my research with Andrea Velasquez shows that Secure Communities also reduced labor supply of female immigrants in household services. Given that women were for the most part not deported under Secure Communities, this effect is potentially due to chilling effects—specifically, immigrant women remain working in the U.S., but reduce their hours worked due to fear of leaving their house and putting themselves or their family at risk of deportation (see here for anecdotal evidence of these responses). By increasing the cost of these household services, increased immigration enforcement also reduces the labor supply of high-skilled citizen mothers, who are most likely to outsource household production. The largest impact we observed was among college-educated citizen mothers with children under age 6 (before children are likely to enter school): mothers of young children experience a 0.8% reduction in the likelihood of working and a reduction of 1.2% in hours worked by as a result of the implementation of Secure Communities in their area. Importantly, being exposed to Secure Communities around a child’s birth has long-run negative effects on mother’s labor supply, with no effects on long-run father’s labor supply, so immigration enforcement may worsen the gender wage and employment gap."