President Trump's immigration crackdown has failed to expand job opportunities for American workers and has instead led to fewer jobs for U.S.-born men without a college degree, according to a new study that reveals the economic toll of aggressive enforcement on working families.
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. 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.
Groundbreaking Research Reveals Labor Market Impact
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. The findings challenge the administration's central promise that immigration enforcement would create opportunities for American workers.
East described U.S.-born workers as filling "complementary" jobs and explained the cascading economic effects: "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."
Chilling Effect on Communities
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. The research suggested the "chilling effect" under Trump 2.0 was bigger than it was during past mass deportation efforts.
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." This climate of fear has disrupted not only immigrant communities but the broader economic ecosystem in which U.S.-born workers depend on stable employment.
Administration Defends Policy
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson defended the approach, 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."
However, the empirical evidence from the study directly contradicts these claims, showing that enforcement actions have contracted rather than expanded job opportunities for the very workers the administration claims to champion—U.S.-born men without college degrees who have historically faced economic challenges and wage stagnation.
The research reveals a fundamental disconnect between immigration enforcement rhetoric and economic reality, with working-class Americans bearing the costs of policies that shrink overall labor demand rather than redirect it toward native-born workers.
Why This Matters:
The study's findings expose how aggressive immigration enforcement harms the very American workers it purports to help, revealing that U.S.-born men without college degrees—a group already facing economic vulnerability—lose job opportunities when labor markets contract due to enforcement actions. The research demonstrates that immigration and native-born employment are economically complementary rather than competitive, meaning policies that disrupt immigrant labor force participation reduce overall economic activity and eliminate jobs across the board. The intensified climate of fear created by indiscriminate ICE operations extends beyond undocumented workers to destabilize entire communities and industries, with ripple effects throughout local economies. For working families, the failure of enforcement to raise wages or expand opportunities while simultaneously reducing available jobs represents a double blow that deepens economic insecurity rather than alleviating it, underscoring the need for evidence-based labor policy that protects all workers rather than ideology-driven enforcement that leaves everyone worse off.