Brookings Says 2025 Immigration Crackdown Cost 668,000 U.S. Jobs, Including 7,986 in Kansas City
Updated
Updated · The Beacon · Aug 7
Brookings Says 2025 Immigration Crackdown Cost 668,000 U.S. Jobs, Including 7,986 in Kansas City
1 articles · Updated · The Beacon · Aug 7
Summary
668,000 jobs were lost nationwide during the 2025 immigration enforcement surge, Brookings found, with Kansas City alone losing 7,986 jobs after a 93% jump in arrests.
Brookings linked each excess immigration arrest to 13 lost jobs, saying raids and highly visible detentions created labor shortages, delayed projects and reduced consumer spending as people stayed home.
Construction and food service were hit hardest, and Brookings said job losses spread beyond immigrants to American-born workers, with one to six U.S.-born jobs lost for every excess arrest.
In Kansas City, immigrants are changing work hours, avoiding stores and seeking taillight repairs to reduce police stops, while neighbors and advocates shift food, cash and services into quieter local networks.
The findings add economic evidence to criticism of the administration's broader deportation push, which targets 2,000 detentions a day and increasingly reaches immigrants with work authorization or pending protections.
How will the sudden disappearance of essential workers permanently alter the economic landscape of Midwestern cities?
The 2025–2026 Immigration Crackdown: 668,000 Jobs Lost, Labor Shortages, and the New Economic Reality
Overview
The Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown in 2025 triggered a cascade of economic shocks across the United States. ICE operations led to hundreds of thousands of job losses in targeted cities, with each arrest causing far more jobs to disappear as businesses struggled to replace workers and were forced to cut operations or close. The crackdown’s visible street arrests created widespread fear, driving immigrants—including those with legal status—to avoid public spaces, which sharply reduced consumer spending and hurt even sectors with few immigrant workers. These disruptions not only stalled population growth in major cities but also damaged the high-skill immigration pipeline, threatening long-term economic growth and innovation.