AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTYou have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.Guest EssayJune 26, 2026Credit...Lucas BurtinListen · 6:01 min By Marcela EscobariMs. Escobari is a senior fellow and a research vice president in the global economy and development program at the Brookings Institution.The Trump administration has argued that mass immigration enforcement will free millions of jobs for Americans by reducing competition from foreigners.The opposite is true. Despite the administration’s claims, a recent study, which I helped write, shows that the crackdown on immigrants has not unlocked jobs for Americans. During the first nine months of 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations led directly to at least 668,000 lost jobs across 86 U.S. metropolitan areas. The damage is easy to miss in national statistics. Since 2025, the national unemployment rate has hovered between 4.0 and 4.5 percent. But the national rate, with its large margin of error, isn’t a good measure of local employment shocks. It’s more likely that the notable effects show up in local jobs data. And they do.ICE was active in both small and large cities. Laredo and El Paso in Texas and Richmond, Va., saw substantial increases in enforcement. And while the conventional narrative is that ICE targeted blue sanctuary cities, 56 of the 86 metro areas where ICE was most active were in red states, primarily Texas, Florida and Georgia. Which means that they bore the brunt of the job losses.Looking at the 51 cities where we were able to track data for at least six months in 2025 after the surges began, we saw that the situation worsened over time. In places where ICE enforcement surged between January and March — including Dallas, Detroit, Miami, Oklahoma City and Philadelphia — employment losses were twice as high after six months.The key finding: Immigrant and native workers are not simply substitutes for each other. They are complements. When you remove one, you often undermine the other.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT