AI Summary
5 min readOn a walk through San Antonio’s East Side, James Norte points out bike shops, taco stands, laundromats, and a small tech startup next to a bookstore. Norte runs an economic development group called San Antonio for Growth on the East Side, and he’s usually the guy giving the upbeat pitch about a community where you can “live and work and play and pray.” But lately, something else has crept into his conversations. He describes a friend who mows lawns for a living—a U.S. citizen who does not speak Spanish and is Latino. That friend is “actively afraid that because of how he looks, he might one day be mowing a lawn and could be picked up by ICE.”
That fear is not just anecdotal. While ICE arrests have not made the same headlines as earlier this year, the numbers tell a different story. An analysis by UC Berkeley and UCLA’s Deportation Data Project found that ICE arrested nearly 50,000 people in July, making it the biggest month for arrests since President Trump took office again. The stated goal of this enforcement is to make communities safer. But new research suggests the economic side effects are real, broad, and surprisingly persistent—hitting not just immigrants but everyone.
What the data shows about spending and foot traffic
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:06) **San Antonio's East Side and the Fear of ICE** - James Norte, an economic development leader, describes the vibrant community on San Antonio's East Side, but shares a story of a U.S. citizen friend who is afraid of being picked up by ICE due to his appearance.
- 2 (01:25) **The Indicator: 'Economies of Fear'** - Hosts Waylon Wong and Adrian Ma introduce the show's focus on how a ramp-up in ICE arrests is creating what a researcher calls an "economy of fear" that affects everyone, not just immigrants.
- 3 (03:18) **The Researcher's Approach** - Professor Zeke Hernandez of the University of Pennsylvania explains how he studied the economic impact of a new, more pervasive ICE enforcement strategy.
- 4 (04:32) **The Clear Pattern: A Drop in Business** - Zeke Hernandez reveals the key finding from his data: when ICE activity occurs, businesses see a three percent drop in foot traffic and a seven percent drop in consumer spending.
- 5 (05:51) **A Permanent, Fear-Driven Economy** - Zeke Hernandez explains that the economic downturn caused by ICE activity is not temporary; foot traffic and spending drop and stay down permanently.
- 6 (06:36) **The Broader Impact and Expert Critique** - The hosts connect Zeke's findings to the Trump administration's larger campaign to reduce immigration, which has hit industries like healthcare, agriculture, and construction.
- 7 (07:50) **A Looming Threat in San Antonio** - Back in San Antonio, James Norte is worried about a new ICE processing facility planned for the East Side, an area that has already suffered from decades of disinvestment.
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Show Notes
Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.
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