Loading summary
Narrator
Support for npr. And the following message come from Edward Jones. What does it mean to be rich? Is it having a million stories to share? Is it having more time to give? Edward Jones Financial Advisors will support what matters to you. EDWARD jones, Member, SIPC this is Planet Money from npr.
Erica Barris
I wanted to stop here because I just wanted to stand in front of these beautiful dresses.
Jennifer Aguilar
Yes, they're gorgeous. Back when I was 15, the dresses were not as pretty as they are now.
Erica Barris
Jennifer Aguilar and I are standing in front of a shop that sells quinceanera dresses, those sparkly, ornate gowns girls wear for their coming of age parties. We're in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago.
Amanda Aronczyk
More than 75% of people here are Mexican or Mexican American, including Jennifer. She was born here, raised here. Got her quinceanera dress here.
Erica Barris
What did your dress look like?
Jennifer Aguilar
I was very emo. It was black and white and pink Chucks.
Erica Barris
Oh, that is cool.
Grammarly Ad Voice
Yes.
Erica Barris
Okay. Yes, you were styling. Jennifer is now executive director of Little Village's Chamber of Commerce. And to be clear, Little Village is not little. The neighborhood's main Corridor is about 2 miles with more than a thousand shops and businesses. After the magnificent mile in downtown Chicago, Little Village generates the most money in the city.
Amanda Aronczyk
And it is a significant tourist destination. People from all over the country come to eat and shop and, yes, buy a dress at one of the dozens of quinceanera shops.
Erica Barris
But today, it is very, very quiet.
Jennifer Aguilar
Yes, it is.
Amanda Aronczyk
And that is because about a month before President Trump was sworn into office, his incoming border czar announced that Chicago would be one of the first targets for raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, sometimes called ice. People assumed Little Village would be particularly high on the target list.
Erica Barris
And now I'm standing here with Jennifer just a few days after Trump has been sworn in and after his first flurry of executive orders. There haven't been raids in Little Village yet, but Jennifer says the moment Trump was sworn in, the neighborhood changed.
Jennifer Aguilar
I think the rumors that are going on are they're going to come to the businesses, they're going to come to the restaurants, they're going to come here. And even if they're not looking for you, if you're there, then they can snatch you. And I think that those are the types of messages and rumors that are generating this fear. People are afraid of going out to buy something at the grocery store and never coming back to their, to their families.
Erica Barris
Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Erica Barris.
Amanda Aronczyk
And I'm Amanda Aronczyk, President Trump has promised the largest deportation in history today on the show what that looks like on the ground in a community that fears being targeted.
Erica Barris
We'll also look to a recent mass deportation effort and and how it gave economists an unusual chance to study what really happens when hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers disappear from the labor market.
Grammarly Ad Voice
This message comes from Grammarly 89% of business leaders say AI is a top priority. The right choice is crucial, which is why teams at one third of Fortune 500 companies use Grammarly with top tier security credentials and 15 years of experience in responsible AI. Grammarly isn't just another AI communication assistant. It's how companies like yours increase productivity while keeping data protected and private. See why 70,000 teams trust Grammarly@Grammarly.com Enterprise.
Narrator
This message comes from Home Instead Home Instead knows that if you leave home to seek aging care, you leave behind more than just empty rooms. You say goodbye to the place where you built your life, so why not stay home instead? With help from Home Instead and their trusted caregivers, you can stay in the place where your memories were made. Learn more@homeinstead.com Home Instead for a better what's next?
Grammarly Ad Voice
This message comes from Grammarly. At an Enterprise level, nothing is more important than communication. Grammarly for Enterprise enables your team to work smarter and faster. Other AI tools can't quantify business impact, but Grammarly gives you actionable insights and measurable results with features like their Effective Communication Score, which tracks key metrics so you can make data driven decisions to improve outcomes. Learn more@Grammarly.com Enterprise.
Erica Barris
Little Village is not totally a ghost town. We see a fair number of reporters like us coming and going.
Amanda Aronczyk
There are also non reporters, just a handful of people who seem to be going about their business, going to the dentist or to the grocery store.
Jennifer Aguilar
Right now it's around the time that kids are coming out from school. Usually you would see the kids hanging out even with the snow, with their parents, with their friends. And right now it seems like it's very kind of the less time they can spend on the street, the better.
Amanda Aronczyk
Jennifer Aguilar, our guide slash lifelong Little Village resident slash head of Chamber of Commerce, says, people are laying low right.
Erica Barris
Now and we felt that on the street when we stopped people to talk, we heard that people were scared to go into work, that people were keeping their kids home from school. One person who told us she didn't have legal papers was worried about what would happen to her family if she had to go back to Mexico. Her daughters only ever lived in the us. But when we asked all of those people if they'd feel comfortable being recorded, they were like, no, not at all.
Amanda Aronczyk
Jennifer was not surprised. She said people are scared that talking to the media will put a target on them. What has surprised her, though, is how quickly the mood has changed in this area.
Erica Barris
Jennifer walks us up in front of what looks like a used clothing store.
Jennifer Aguilar
This is like a secondhand boutique.
Erica Barris
There's a sign, plain white paper with.
Jennifer Aguilar
Handwritten black letters right here they put under door. Know your rights. Keep. Keep silent. Don't sign anything and talk to your lawyer.
Erica Barris
And then below that is like a little word of encouragement.
Jennifer Aguilar
They're like, rise above.
Erica Barris
You can read it in Spanish.
Jennifer Aguilar
Oh, in Spanish.
Erica Barris
Okay.
Jennifer Aguilar
Arriva no estragente. No hay que perder el animo esto tamien pasara.
Amanda Aronczyk
Basically, keep your head up. This too shall pass.
Erica Barris
Were you expecting a change like this would come, or has this been a surprise in any way?
Jennifer Aguilar
I was expecting it, but not as heavy and as soon, but we didn't think it would be on day one. And as impactful as it's been so.
Erica Barris
Far, it's only been three days.
Jennifer Aguilar
I know. That's what's insane, that it's only been three days.
Erica Barris
As of this recording, five days into the Trump presidency, there have been more than 60 immigration related executive orders or agency directives. They affect everything from refugee and asylum programs to changing where immigration arrests can occur, to challenging the very idea of birthright citizenship. That last one has already been temporarily blocked by a judge.
Amanda Aronczyk
We reached out to the White House for comment and did not receive a response. But what seems to be true is that these new immigration policies are in some ways a response. In the last few years, under President Biden, southern border crossings more than doubled to record high levels, about 2 million people a year. And while those crossings are through Mexico, only about a third of the people crossing were born in Mexico. The others come from Central and South America, and there are people coming from as far away as China, India, and Senegal.
Erica Barris
Immigration and Customs Enforcement says they've been making individual arrests, as they were also doing during the Biden administration. And in terms of the kinds of big surprise raids at businesses or public places, there's reportedly been at least one of those sweeps. The mayor of Newark, New Jersey, announced this week that agents raided a local establishment and detained undocumented residents as well as US Citizens.
Chloe East
I think lots of people who study immigration are anxiously waiting to see what the Trump administration does this week.
Amanda Aronczyk
Chloe east is an associate professor of economics at University of Colorado Denver, and she has spent many years studying deportations. And she says it's worth noting that so much of the attention this week has been around these raids. And raids are just one strategy that the government uses to find people without legal status and deport them.
Chloe East
Raids are typically smaller scale enforcement events meant to create a lot of fear in the local community and make headlines, but don't end up with many people being arrested or deported.
Erica Barris
What Chloe's waiting to see is what else is happening besides the raids. How the Trump administration plans to systematically deport millions of people as they've promised.
Amanda Aronczyk
Because she has carefully studied this very thing. A time when the US Government changed policies to make deportations easier. It's a perfect case study from not very long ago.
Chloe East
It was actually mostly implemented and run in the first Obama administration.
Erica Barris
When President Obama left office in 2017, he had been nicknamed the deporter in chief, and that is in part because of this one particular mass deportation effort.
Amanda Aronczyk
It was a program that technically began under George W. Bush right before Obama took office, but Obama expanded it. It was this big post 911 initiative called Secure Communities.
Erica Barris
You can actually find a law enforcement training video from 13 years ago when this program was being expanded.
Amanda Aronczyk
The training video, kind of cheesy. We see an American flag, the Constitution, the Statue of Liberty, more American flags.
DHS Training Video Voice
As a law enforcement official, you've taken a noble and honorable oath to protect and serve.
Erica Barris
This video was made for local law enforcement agencies, you know, like police departments. And it was made by the Department of Homeland Security, or dhs, because under this new program, those local police departments were suddenly a big part of this national deportation effort. Secure Communities.
DHS Training Video Voice
First of all, what is Secure Communities? Very simply, it is an initiative to help DHS identify removable aliens arrested for crimes. Under Secure Communities, your agency's fingerprint data is now shared with dhs.
Chloe East
So what Secure Communities did is sort of automate the process by which anybody who's arrested will have their immigration status checked.
Amanda Aronczyk
Under this program, when anyone was arrested for a criminal offense, their fingerprints would automatically be sent to an ICE office, you know, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and.
Chloe East
That ICE office would run the fingerprints through their database to see if this person might be eligible for deportation. And then if they might be eligible for deportation, then ICE would issue a detainer order, and the local law enforcement agency would have to hold the person they just arrested until ICE could arrive and see if. If the person was indeed actually eligible for deportation.
Erica Barris
So, yeah, the message from DHS to local law enforcement was this doesn't really change anything you do. We'll make it easy.
DHS Training Video Voice
The most important message is that Secure Communities does not change who you question or arrest. You have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution. You also act as a guardian of civil rights and liberties. Thank you for taking the time to watch the video today.
Chloe East
In that first kind of era of secure communities, between 2008 and 2014, about 400,000 people were deported.
Amanda Aronczyk
Obama actually deported lots more people than that. The 400,000 plus number is just from Secure Communities. And Chloe says it's worth noting that 17% of those people were arrested but not actually convicted of a crime. And of the people who were convicted, 79% of them were convicted for non violent crimes. You know, things like traffic violations or violating immigration law, which of course are crimes. And 21% of the people convicted were deported for violent crimes. But Chloe's point is so we shouldn't.
Chloe East
Think of Secure Communities as only picking up people who have been convicted of murder.
Erica Barris
Now, we don't know if this new Trump administration plans to use this exact program, but Trump did use a version of Secure Communities during his last term. And Chloe says it seems clear he's already approaching immigration and deportation in a similar way, leaning on local law enforcement to be part of the effort and trying to expand the list of crimes that can get someone deported.
Amanda Aronczyk
And similar to the 2000s, Trump has justified mass deportation as a safety issue national security. What's different though, is that there's also this economic piece to his promises. There's this idea that mass deportation should help American workers.
Erica Barris
And this American workers justification. This is what Chloe east has specifically been studying.
Amanda Aronczyk
What do people generally assume is going to happen to US Citizens when people are deported?
Chloe East
Yeah. So if you just sort of take the simplest economic supply and demand diagram, if you all of a sudden remove a lot of people from the labor market through detentions and deportations, we think that labor supply goes down and that increases the wages of workers who are left behind, which should be primarily US Citizen workers.
Erica Barris
In other words, under that simplest sort of diagram of all this, you might assume that reducing the number of immigrants would increase jobs and wages of US Born workers.
Chloe East
The other assumption that is embedded in that simple supply and demand diagram is that all workers are interchangeable. So if we remove one worker without authorization, that US Born workers will just simply slot into the jobs left behind by that unauthorized worker.
Amanda Aronczyk
In economics terms, that model assumes that people without legal status act as a substitute for American citizen workers.
Erica Barris
And Chloe says that is a pretty big assumption that can be hard to test. But as she looked at the Obama era Secure Communities initiative, she realized that it was an ideal natural experiment.
Amanda Aronczyk
It had this sort of staggered rollout, county by county, which was useful because it would let Chloe study what happens when the program suddenly switched on in one place but not in another place.
Erica Barris
Plus, once Secure Communities started somewhere, it was pretty much a uniform program of deportation. It didn't matter a place's political leanings, their own local views on immigration, how local law enforcement worked.
Chloe East
It was just sort of done automatically when people's fingerprints were taken and entered into this database. There wasn't a lot of flexibility that, you know, the police force in Texas could implement the policy differently than the police force in California or other places in the U.S. chloe started to study.
Amanda Aronczyk
This back in 2017, and her team's basic question was, did all those deportations ultimately help U.S. workers?
Chloe East
We find that mass deportations do not have a positive impact for the US labor market as a whole or for US Born workers.
Erica Barris
What they found was that when people without legal status were removed from a labor market, it did not lead to more jobs for US Citizens. It had the opposite effect. It led to fewer jobs for US citizens.
Chloe East
We find that for every 13 fewer unauthorized immigrants who are working in a local labor market, that leads to 10 fewer U.S. born workers who are working in that same labor market.
Amanda Aronczyk
Okay, that seems very dramatic, right? That's a big effect.
Chloe East
It is.
Erica Barris
So why, why might that be happening?
Amanda Aronczyk
Well, Chloe says there are two main reasons. Reason number one, simply when a bunch of people are removed from an economy, when they've been deported, this has an economic impact.
Chloe East
Unauthorized immigrants, as everybody does, go out to their local restaurant, they get haircuts, they shop at the grocery store. Unauthorized immigrants also pay sales tax. Many of them pay various types of income tax. And all of that helps to stimulate local demand, which also helps to create jobs for everybody in the community, including US Born workers.
Erica Barris
And this isn't just about deportations. Chloe says secure communities likely also had a chilling effect. You know, people would have stopped working, didn't want to leave their homes, or maybe even left the US Completely. All of that would be a hit to the local economy and would cause a drop in jobs for US Born workers. This is exactly what we saw happening in the Little Village neighborhood in Chicago.
Amanda Aronczyk
But reason number two, most US Born workers and unauthorized workers do not seem to act as substitutes in the real world. When you deport someone who doesn't have legal status in the US that does not mean a US Citizen is going to take that job.
Chloe East
Unauthorized workers take the jobs that actually help create more jobs for US Born workers. So having more unauthorized workers who are willing to take lower, paid, more dirty, more dangerous jobs actually helps to create jobs that are complementary to those that US Born workers take.
Erica Barris
She means complementary in the economic sense. Complements are goods or services that are used together as opposed to substitutes, which essentially compete with each other.
Amanda Aronczyk
The way Chloe puts it in her paper, their findings from the Secure Communities program suggest that many immigrant workers are complements to citizen workers instead of substitutes.
Chloe East
So if you think about like a construction company that's writing a contract to build a new building or to do a remodel, in order to hire a manager for that construction site, that company has to be able to find laborers to actually do the construction. And so the construction site workers are complementary to the construction site manager.
Erica Barris
Or take a restaurant. If a restaurant can't find anyone to bus tables, they will hire fewer waiters and waitresses.
Chloe East
And those jobs are typically taken more often by us born people.
Amanda Aronczyk
Okay, so let's say you run this. We're running this restaurant and the unauthorized workers are not there anymore because they have been deported. Like, why won't I just offer more money to just pay citizens to work and bust the tables? Like I could just make it a better job.
Chloe East
Right? That is what we would expect to see in economic theory. That kind of gets back to the basic supply and demand diagram. That is not what we see happening in reality. We don't see any evidence that employers are offering higher wages. We don't see any evidence that US Born workers are getting higher wages.
Amanda Aronczyk
Chloe is not the first person to use a big deportation to try and study this stuff. There is a paper looking at the late 1920s and early 1930s where hundreds of thousands of people from Mexico were repatriated out of the United States. And there was another paper that looked at a time in the 1960s when a change in immigration law resulted in half a million seasonal workers disappearing from the US labor market. Both of those studies came to basically the same conclusion as Chloe's. No positive impacts for U.S. workers.
Erica Barris
After the break, how all of this economic theory is playing out in the real world right now. The chilling effect in action.
Grammarly Ad Voice
This message comes from Charles Schwab. When it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices like full service, wealth management and advice when you need it. You can also invest on your own and trade on thinkorswim. Visit schwab.com to learn more. This message comes from Midi Health. If you're a woman over 40 dealing with hot flashes, insomnia, weight gain or brain fog, you don't have to accept it as just another part of aging. The clinicians at MitiHealth understand what you're experiencing and know how to help. Midi Health provides specialized care for perimenopause and menopause covered by insurance. Book your visit today@joinmidi.com that's joinmidi.com this.
Narrator
Message comes from Capital One. Say hello to stress free subscription management. Easily track block or cancel recurring charges right from the Capital One mobile app. Simple as that. Learn more@Capital1.com Subscriptions Terms and Conditions apply. This message comes from Schwab. At Schwab, how you invest is your choice, not theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices. You can invest and trade on your own. Plus get advice and more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs. With award winning service, low costs and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab. Visit schwab.com to learn more.
Erica Barris
Here in Chicago's little village, there's this restaurant that's been around since the 70s. It's one of those places that everyone says to check out. Nuevo Leon, the best Mexican food. It was opened by an immigrant. Always a scene.
Amanda Aronczyk
We got there and it was this big, beautiful mural building.
Erica Barris
It sounded loud.
Laura Gutierrez
Yeah.
Erica Barris
It had this big marquee sign out front with these light bulbs that sounded like they were about to explode.
Laura Gutierrez
Here we go.
Jennifer Aguilar
Cut.
Erica Barris
Oh, it smells good.
Chloe East
Oh, it smells so amazing.
Erica Barris
So we went in and it quickly became clear to us that this one restaurant is a microcosm of all the things that economist Chloe east had described.
Amanda Aronczyk
Laura Gutierrez runs a restaurant. Her dad opened it back in the day.
Erica Barris
Do you have some time for us?
Laura Gutierrez
A couple minutes? Not much.
Erica Barris
Okay. Should we do it here? She joined us at a table for her couple minutes and we asked her, what has it been like the last few days?
Laura Gutierrez
What has it been like? Turmoil. Everything upside down. People don't know what to expect.
Erica Barris
So I'm looking around and it's lunchtime. It's like noon right now. And this is a very big restaurant we're in. But there's maybe a little.
Laura Gutierrez
There's 170 people.
Erica Barris
100 and seventy people. I do not see 170 people in here.
Jennifer Aguilar
No.
Laura Gutierrez
And when you came in, you were the only table?
Erica Barris
We were the only ones. Is this typical?
Laura Gutierrez
No.
Erica Barris
Even in zero degree weather, it's not Typical.
Laura Gutierrez
The cold doesn't stop Chicago. We live in the Windy City. We've been here for 47 years. I've been cutting the shift down. We've been down to one shift a day. People are losing taxes, revenues. Everybody's gonna take a loss on it.
Erica Barris
You said that there's only one shift this week.
Amanda Aronczyk
That's our producer, Willa Rubin.
Erica Barris
Why only one shift?
Laura Gutierrez
There's one shift because there is not. There's no business. How are you gonna be able to pay employees? Economics. You gotta cut down supply and demand.
Erica Barris
It's that chilling effect. She's had to halve her orders to all her suppliers, cut hours for her employees. She's going day by day right now and despite everything, feeling somehow still kind of cautiously optimistic.
Laura Gutierrez
We'll see where this prevails. Our president, he's a businessman. I have faith. I don't think he's going to want to hurt the economy vastly. If you pull out people from the community like that, you will have USA in shambles.
Erica Barris
Our couple minutes with Laura comes to an end. She leaves our table and heads back to work.
Laura Gutierrez
Have a blessed one, guys. Thank you.
Erica Barris
After we left Chicago, we checked back in on Little Village. It's been two days since our visit and still no raids as of this recording. Today's episode of Planet Money was produced by Willa Rubin with an assist from Emma Peasley. It was edited by Kenny Malone. It was engineered by Sina Lofredo and fact checked by Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer, America Barris.
Amanda Aronczyk
And I'm Amanda Aronczyk. This is npr. Thanks for listening.
Narrator
This message comes from NPR sponsor Informatica. Everybody's ready for AI except your data. Informatica offers the only end to end AI powered platform that connects, manages and unifies your data across virtually any multi cloud hybrid environment. Informatica accelerates your AI readiness and scale at a pace that allows you to pay for only what you use without compromise. Get your Data ready for AI@informatica.com AI Informatica, where data and AI come to life.
Grammarly Ad Voice
This message comes from Warby Parker. What makes a great pair of glasses at Warby Parker? It's all the invisible extras without the extra cost, like free adjustments for life. Find your pair@warbyparker.com or visit one of their hundreds of stores around the country. This message comes from Warby Parker. Prescription eyewear that's expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Glasses designed in house from premium material starting at just $95, including prescription lenses. Stop by a Warby Parker store near.
Planet Money: The "Chilling Effect" of Deportations – Detailed Summary
Podcast Information:
00:25 – 02:13
The episode opens in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood, a bustling area with over a thousand shops and businesses, predominantly Mexican or Mexican American. Hosts Erica Barris and Amanda Aronczyk meet Jennifer Aguilar, the executive director of Little Village's Chamber of Commerce. They discuss the significance of quinceanera dresses, symbolic of cultural traditions, setting a backdrop of a vibrant community.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
02:13 – 07:03
Shortly after President Trump was sworn in, Little Village experienced a palpable shift. The announcement that Chicago would be a primary target for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids instilled fear within the community. While immediate raids had not occurred, the mere anticipation altered daily life.
Key Points:
Notable Quotes:
07:03 – 09:42
Within five days of Trump's presidency, over 60 immigration-related executive orders or directives were issued, addressing refugee programs, altering arrest protocols, and challenging birthright citizenship (though the latter was temporarily blocked by a judge). The administration's policies mirror previous efforts but with an added economic rationale.
Key Points:
Notable Quotes:
09:42 – 16:42
Economist Chloe East examines the Secure Communities program, a mass deportation initiative expanded under President Obama. Originating from a pre-Obama era post-9/11 initiative, Secure Communities automated the process of identifying and deporting undocumented immigrants through local law enforcement collaborations.
Key Points:
Notable Quotes:
16:42 – 19:16
Chloe East's research challenges the conventional economic theory that reducing the labor supply through deportations would uplift wages and employment for U.S. citizens. Instead, her findings reveal a contrary effect.
Key Points:
Notable Quotes:
19:16 – 25:28
The removal of undocumented workers not only affects the labor market but also dampens economic activity within communities. The reduction in spending by deported individuals leads to decreased demand for goods and services, impacting local businesses and employment.
Key Points:
Notable Quotes:
25:12 – 25:32
The episode concludes with a visit to Nuevo Leon, a longstanding restaurant in Little Village. Owner Laura Gutierrez shares firsthand experiences of the economic strain caused by the chilling effect, highlighting reduced business operations and financial losses.
Key Points:
Notable Quotes:
25:32 – 26:58
As the episode wraps up, the hosts reflect on the ongoing situation in Little Village, noting the absence of further raids but the persistent fear and economic challenges faced by the community. They underscore the complex interplay between immigration policies and economic health, emphasizing the unintended consequences of mass deportations.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
This episode of Planet Money critically examines the Trump administration's aggressive deportation policies, revealing that mass removals of undocumented workers may not yield the intended economic benefits. Through in-depth analysis and real-world examples, the episode highlights the "chilling effect"—a climate of fear that suppresses economic activity and negatively impacts both immigrant and citizen workers. Economist Chloe East's research serves as a pivotal evidence-based counterpoint to prevailing assumptions, demonstrating that immigrant workers often complement rather than substitute native labor, thereby contributing to broader economic vitality.
Note: This summary excludes advertisements, intros, and outros, focusing solely on the substantive content of the episode.