The Great Recession and Immigrant Arrest

• In Event: 549 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 15. Crimmigration

Abstract

Recent research on the arrest of immigrants in the United States is largely descriptive and focused on a specific agency or area of the country. Using data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that spans a decade (2002-2012), this study documents trends in immigrant arrest involving two different agencies: The Border Patrol (BP) and Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE). Descriptive time series analyses track changes in immigrant arrest and unemployment in the decade following the September 11th terrorist attacks. Consistent with a political economy framework, trends in the number of immigrant arrests made in the interior part of the country closely mirror trends in unemployment rates. Fixed effects models pooling yearly data for several different jurisdictions of ICE and BP reveal that, within jurisdictions, changes in interior arrest rates and changes in unemployment rates are positively and significantly related. The dramatic increase in immigrant arrests that accompanied the Great Recession reflects the fact that immigrant arrest is largely discretional.

Author

• Kara Joyner, Bowling Green State University