TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Balanzo, Uma De
AU  - Rodríguez-Planas, Núria
AU  - Roff, Jennifer Louise
        TI  - Immigration Enforcement Visibility and Consumer Spending
        PY  - 2026/May/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18620
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp18620
        AB  - We exploit the sharp escalation in community-based ICE enforcement following the January 2025 presidential transition to estimate its causal effect on consumer spending. Using Synthetic DiD with cross-state variation in surge intensity, aggregate card spending fell 1.7 percentage points in high-enforcement states — an effect robust to covariate adjustment, and pre-tariff truncation. Null estimates for jail-based arrests and non-in-person commerce, where enforcement is invisible to surrounding communities, rule out a broad regional demand shock and isolate enforcement visibility as the operative mechanism. Sector-level estimates reveal two empirically distinct channels: in states with Democratic governors, aggregate spending fell 4.1 pp (p<0.01), driven by Accommodation & Food (−2.3 pp) and Arts & Entertainment(−7.3 pp), consistent with behavioral withdrawal from public commercial life where enforcement was most visible. In Trump-voting states, Home Improvement Centers and Transportation & Warehousing fell 3.8 pp and 3.0 pp respectively, consistent with labor supply disruption in undocumented construction employment.  Economic costs extend well beyond the directly targeted population and depend on the mode of enforcement.
        KW  - immigration enforcement
KW  - consumer spending
KW  - synthetic difference-in-differences
KW  - ICE arrests
KW  - local labor markets
        ER  -