Arresting Immigrants: Unemployment and Immigration Enforcement

Abstract

This study provides an examination of immigrant arrests involving two different agencies of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS): The Border Patrol (BP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Descriptive time series analyses track yearly changes in immigrant arrests in the decade following the September 11 terrorist attacks (2002-2013). For many DHS jurisdictions, changes in the rates of immigrant arrest closely mirrored changes in the rates of unemployment. First-difference regression models pooling yearly data for the ICE jurisdictions demonstrate that the associations between changes in unemployment rates and changes in immigrant arrest rates were positive and significant.