President Trump's immigration crackdown has not expanded job opportunities for American workers, according to a new study cited by Axios, while immigration raids and checkpoints are weighing on the labor market and leaving fewer jobs for U.S.-born men without a college degree as well as undocumented immigrants. The apparatus of enforcement is doing what it always does: narrowing life chances at the bottom while officials at the top dress it up as economic management.
Who Pays for the Crackdown
Axios said the research found an employment drain for some U.S.-born men and no evidence that employers raised wages to attract U.S.-born workers, concluding that the results reflected a reduction in overall demand. That is the part the people running the show do not advertise. The crackdown was sold as a way to create jobs for American workers, but the study cited by Axios found no wage response from employers and no expansion of opportunity. Instead, the labor market appears to have contracted.
The Washington Post reported that President Donald Trump’s immigration raids and checkpoints are weighing on the labor market, leading to fewer jobs for U.S.-born men without a college degree as well as undocumented immigrants, according to an economic study out this week. The hierarchy is plain enough: state power moves through raids and checkpoints, and the people below absorb the damage.
What the Study Found
Axios said the research from Chloe East, an associate professor of economics at the University of Colorado Boulder, and Elizabeth Cox, a research assistant, was the first of its kind studying the national labor market impacts of the Trump 2.0 ICE blitz. CU Boulder noted in a post on the research that in areas hit with a "surge," there was a 4% decrease in employment among likely undocumented workers still in the U.S. in likely affected jobs.
That 4% decrease is the kind of number that gets buried under official rhetoric, but it points to the real cost of enforcement: people pushed out of work, pushed into fear, and pushed further from any stability. Axios said the research suggested the "chilling effect" under Trump 2.0 was bigger than it was during past mass deportation efforts. The study’s language may be academic, but the mechanism is familiar: terror as labor policy.
East said, "Because there is such a randomness and indiscriminate nature to what ice is doing right now, lots of people are afraid to leave their home, even more so than we've seen before." That quote gets to the heart of the matter. When people are afraid to leave home, the state has already reached into daily life and rearranged it through force.
The White House Version
Axios also quoted White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson as saying there "is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force" and that "President Trump's agenda to create jobs for American workers represents this Administration's commitment to capitalizing on that untapped potential while delivering on our mandate to enforce our immigration laws." The language is polished, but the content is the same old command structure: the administration claims a mandate, the labor force is treated as a resource to be capitalized on, and enforcement is presented as a virtue.
Axios said East described U.S.-born workers as filling "complementary" jobs and said, "When a construction company has a hard time finding people to do those jobs, they're going to build fewer homes, and fewer new buildings in general, and hire less people in general, including jobs that are typically taken by U.S.-born workers, like electricians or roofers." That is the economic chain reaction in plain terms: when enforcement disrupts workers, the bosses do not suddenly become generous. They build less, hire less, and the damage spreads.
The study cited by Axios and The Washington Post shows a labor market shaped by coercion, not freedom. Raids and checkpoints do not create security for workers; they produce fear, reduce employment, and leave the people at the bottom to carry the cost of decisions made by the state and its employers.