The Impact of Increased ICE Activity on the Child Care Workforce and Mothers’ Employment
The surge in ICE arrests erodes the child care workforce and pulls mothers of young children out of the labor market.
Shedding Early Light on ICE’s Chilling Effects on Child Care
When President Trump took office in early 2025, promising the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, the Better Life Lab at New America saw a ripple effect coming: one that would disrupt the country’s already-precarious child care system, an industry where one in five workers is foreign-born. By December 2025, the Better Life Lab published the first hard data capturing these chilling effects. In a first-of-its-kind analysis—drawing on U.S. Census labor data and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrest records from the administration’s first six months in office—report authors Chris Herbst (Arizona State University) and Erdal Tekin (American University) found that rising ICE arrests drove out 39,000 foreign-born child care workers and, in turn, pushed 77,000 US-born mothers of young children out of the workforce. The findings clearly connected the dots between three major issues often treated as separate policy areas: immigration enforcement, child care, and maternal employment. Better Life Lab’s work has helped to broaden this conversation, equip policymakers and journalists with the first hard evidence connecting immigration enforcement to the child care crisis, and shape the ongoing policy debate.
Specifically, the report has:
- Equipped policymakers with data: Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office cited the report in a February 2026 memo to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, co-signed by 48 members of Congress, warning that immigration enforcement was “making it more difficult for Americans to find and afford child care.”
- Grown the evidence base: The Better Life Lab report has also served as a strong reference point and scholarly resource. In May 2026, it was republished in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “[The report] adds timely, important evidence that ICE raids in the second Trump administration are hurting, not helping, U.S.-born workers,” said Chloe East, an associate professor from the University of Colorado Boulder.
- Educated the public: Since its publication, the report has been covered by more than 20 outlets, including the Associated Press, The Atlantic, Axios, and The New York Times.
As the current administration continues aggressive immigration enforcement, with tens of thousands of detentions and deportations to date, the impact of this report and future study will prove crucial to understanding how child care workers, children, their families, and caregiver employment will be affected, as well as the potential implications for the broader economy.