The Briefing:
- Of the 32,000 estimated job losses in Minnesota, 25,000 fell on U.S.-born workers and 7,000 on non-arrested immigrants who cut back their labor market participation due to fear of enforcement — evidence that mass deportation eliminates American jobs rather than creating them.
- ICE and Border Patrol agents carried out nearly 4,000 arrests in Minnesota between December 2025 and February 2026 during Operations Metro Surge and PARRIS, with January 2026 alone accounting for 2,524 arrests — compared to a pre-surge monthly average of just 185.
- The City of Minneapolis released a June 2026 updated impact assessment covering December 2025 through April 2026, estimating the operation caused nearly $700 million in total economic losses — including $445 million in lost business revenue and $152 million in lost wages.
- A May 2026 Brookings Institution study found the ICE enforcement surge cost the U.S. economy an estimated 668,000 jobs across 86 cities, with between 51,000 and 297,000 of those losses falling on American-born workers. A September 2026 Brookings follow-up study confirmed the employment shortfall is still widening, with no signs of recovery nearly a year after surges began.
A report published October 8 by the Immigration Research Initiative and the Minnesota Budget Project estimates that the recent spike in ICE arrests erased roughly 32,000 jobs in Minnesota — and three-quarters of those losses landed on U.S.-born workers, not immigrants. The finding dismantles one of the central economic arguments used to justify mass deportation: that removing immigrants frees up jobs for Americans.
How 4,000 Arrests Became 32,000 Lost Jobs
The analysis is built on research by Chloe East and Elizabeth Cox of the University of Colorado, who developed a national regression model measuring the employment cascade triggered by steep increases in ICE arrests throughout 2025. Researchers from the Immigration Research Initiative and the Minnesota Budget Project then applied that model to actual arrest figures from Minnesota, using a conservative approach that, by the authors' own assessment, may understate the true damage if the arrest-to-job-loss relationship turns out to be non-linear.
The core finding is striking: for every 1,000 immigrants taken into custody, the model identifies a statistically significant 0.54 percent drop in employment among U.S.-born men in the affected region — regardless of whether those workers were directly tied to immigrant-heavy industries.
The damage spreads through three interlocking forces. Immigrant and American-born workers typically occupy complementary rather than competing roles, meaning the removal of one group eliminates work for the other. At the same time, immigrant households reduce their everyday spending, which shrinks the consumer base that sustains American-owned restaurants, shops, and service businesses. On top of that, a chilling effect pulls workers with legal status — green card holders, DACA recipients, and naturalized citizens — away from their jobs out of fear of reckless enforcement, compounding the labor shortfall at every level.
The Hospitality Sector Got Hit Hardest
A separate study by North Star Policy Action in partnership with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Policy Research focused specifically on Minnesota's leisure and hospitality industry during the first three months of 2026. Researchers compared actual federal employment data against a modeled "synthetic Minnesota" that projected what the sector would have looked like in the absence of the enforcement surge.
Their finding: while the rest of the country gained roughly 38,000 leisure and hospitality jobs over the same period, Minnesota shed 5,800 — a divergence that appeared precisely when Operation Metro Surge launched. After accounting for seasonal patterns, tariff effects, and other broad economic forces, the study attributes an estimated 4,600 of those losses directly to the crackdown, representing roughly $71 million in wages that workers never received.
For national context, a May 2026 Brookings Institution study that examined ICE enforcement across 86 cities in the first half of 2025 — months before Metro Surge reached Minnesota — linked the national enforcement campaign to 668,000 total job losses, including 14,208 in the Twin Cities metro alone. A September 2026 Brookings update revisited 64 of the most affected cities with additional data and an improved empirical design, finding that employment in those cities had fallen 0.43 percent below expected levels six months after local surges began — and showed no recovery trend even approaching the one-year mark.
Legal Status Was No Shield
One of the most consequential revelations in the IRI report is how broadly the harm extended beyond undocumented workers. Operation PARRIS — Post-Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening — subjected thousands of lawfully resettled refugees to new background checks and intensive reviews of their refugee status, funneling cases to ICE and producing a wave of detentions that drew a federal court challenge. Separately, documented cases showed ICE agents stopping and detaining U.S. citizens, including members of Native American tribes in Minneapolis, based on appearance rather than any indication of immigration status.
The chilling effect reached far beyond those directly targeted. Green card holders, temporary protected status beneficiaries, and asylum seekers scaled back their workforce participation, not because they faced arrest but because the visible, community-wide nature of enforcement made going to work feel risky. Studies cited in the report also document a rise in on-the-job accidents and minimum wage violations during periods of elevated ICE activity — an indication that workers across all backgrounds become too afraid to report safety problems or labor law violations when federal agents are active in their neighborhoods.
The Fiscal Math Cuts Against the Enforcement Logic
Minnesota is home to 495,000 immigrants, among them an estimated 129,000 who are undocumented. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, that undocumented population paid nearly $222 million in Minnesota state and local taxes in 2022 alone.
When Operation Metro Surge wound down in mid-February 2026, Minneapolis city officials released an initial damage estimate of at least $203 million — a figure covering the entire operation, from December 2025 through mid-February, as businesses shuttered and workers stayed home. That number was revised sharply upward in a June 2026 City of Minneapolis impact assessment covering the full December 2025 through April 2026 period, which put the final toll at nearly $700 million in lost economic activity — $445 million in business revenue and $152 million in wages that never reached workers' pockets.
The American Immigration Council estimates that immigration enforcement has consumed more than $200 billion in federal funding since the beginning of 2025, combining existing agency appropriations with the $168 billion directed to immigration and border enforcement through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The IRI report's authors note that the U.S. labor market in 2025 was weaker across the board than in 2024, with higher unemployment, slower hiring, and stagnating wages — a pattern that runs counter to administration projections of improvement for American workers once immigrants were removed from the labor force.
The Minnesota Truth Council — established by Governor Tim Walz via executive order and operating in partnership with the Advocates for Human Rights — is currently gathering survivor testimony about the social and economic consequences of Operations Metro Surge and PARRIS. The council's final report is due to state officials and Minnesota's congressional delegation by December 1, 2026.
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