Introduction

Immigrants play an essential role in the U.S. child care sector.¹ Approximately one in five child care workers is foreign born, making this among the most immigrant-dependent segments of the labor market. Immigrant caregivers tend to bring substantial skills to the job, as they are more likely than U.S.-born caregivers to have a college degree, and they earn more on average. Furthermore, immigrant care workers offer a range of linguistic and cultural competencies that help them connect with families from diverse backgrounds. Because immigrant and U.S.-born caregivers differ systematically in their training, work experience, and language backgrounds, the two groups are not perfect substitutes for each other in the production of child care services.² Therefore, when the number of immigrant caregivers declines, U.S.-born workers cannot quickly fill the gap in the short run, which can reduce overall capacity and affect the availability and quality of care.

The child care sector’s heavy reliance on immigrant labor means that restrictive immigration policy has the potential to directly impact, and disrupt, the stability of the child care market. For example, when the federal government rolled out the Secure Communities program between 2008 and 2013—a policy that shared the fingerprints of local arrestees with the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—employment and wages dropped for both immigrant and U.S.-born child care workers, while families’ participation in center-based child care services decreased.³ The evidence also suggests that the largest reductions in child care employment occurred in the center-based sector, where formal licensing and documentation requirements likely make immigrant workers (as well as the families of the children in their care) more exposed to enforcement activity. These patterns point to the possibility that strict immigration reforms generate chilling effects in which both immigrant and U.S.-born individuals stop working in order to remain hidden from federal agents.

Evidence from news reports suggests similar dynamics are at play in the current policy environment. The second Trump administration rescinded a Biden-era policy that prohibited immigration enforcement actions at child care centers and preschools (via “sensitive location” status).⁴ As a result, there appears to be an increase in ICE activity at or near these facilities, with recent press reports documenting at least one arrest at a Chicago child care center.⁵ In Washington, DC, a late-summer surge in immigration enforcement was accompanied by widespread fear among Hispanic child care providers, along with reports of missed shifts and changes in daily routines to avoid public spaces.⁶ More generally, qualitative research on immigration raids provides further insight into how enforcement shapes workers’ experiences and behavior. Political science scholar Álvaro José Corral documents how worksite raids are staged as highly visible public events that signal state power, creating fear among both targeted and non-targeted workers.⁷ Such visibility discourages immigrant workers from asserting their rights, fosters their withdrawal from public and formal workplaces, and increases job insecurity. Through these mechanisms, enforcement can reduce the observed supply of labor even when few workers are directly detained or deported. It is also possible that any enforcement-induced reduction in child care demand could decrease the equilibrium supply of care services.

This discussion underscores that immigration policy and child care policy are closely connected. When enforcement intensifies, it affects not only the targeted population but also the broader labor market and the families who depend on child care services for their employment. Understanding these connections is essential for assessing how interior immigration enforcement influences the availability, affordability, and quality of care in a system already under strain.

In this report, we address this question by investigating how the recent increase in immigration enforcement, measured by the number of ICE arrests, influence the child care and maternal labor markets. We focus on the period from late 2023 to mid-2025, when ICE arrests rose sharply under new federal enforcement priorities. Using monthly data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) combined with newly compiled arrest records from the Deportation Data Project, we examine the relationship between the intensity of ICE arrests and women’s employment in child care as well as the employment of mothers with preschool-aged children. Our analyses focus on different sectors of the child care market (i.e., center-based, home-based, and private household services) as well as a range of demographic subgroups defined by educational attainment and ethnicity. This approach allows us to capture both short-run labor supply adjustments and potential spillovers across segments of the market. By focusing on a period of heightened enforcement activity and exploiting rich monthly data, our analysis provides new evidence on how immigration enforcement policy influences a critical pillar of the economy and, by extension, the employment of parents who rely on these services.

Our analysis proceeds in four primary steps. We begin by examining the short-run relationship between ICE arrests and the supply of immigrant labor to child care. Given that recent ICE enforcement activities are targeted at immigrants—particularly, but not exclusively, those who are undocumented—it is important to understand whether these activities bind on the most relevant populations. We then assess the relationship between ICE arrests and the employment of U.S.-born individuals in the child care sector. On the one hand, U.S. natives might be more likely to work in child care if ICE’s enforcement activities decrease the supply of immigrant labor. However, such activities might have a “chilling effect,” whereby a climate of fear and confusion leads some U.S.-born individuals to forego a variety of important activities, including avoiding places of employment, schools, and other crowded areas.⁸ We expect any chilling effects to be particularly relevant to U.S.-born Hispanics given that Hispanic immigrants have been heavily targeted by ICE.⁹ If so, these individuals might be discouraged from working in child care.

In the third step, we focus on the early months of the new Trump administration, asking whether the ICE arrests during this period influenced child care employment differently than before President Trump was inaugurated. This period was marked by a sharp escalation in ICE enforcement activity coupled with heightened popular press attention on—and social media–⁠shared footage of—the federal government’s evolving immigration strategy. Together, these factors may have increased public awareness and anxiety around immigration enforcement, likely amplifying the perception of risk within immigrant and ethnic minority communities.¹⁰ The growing attention is evident across a variety of indicators, including measures of online search activity.¹¹ The growing public interest in immigration enforcement suggests that the same level of arrest activity during the Trump era may have larger behavioral and labor market effects than in earlier periods when enforcement was less visible. We test this possibility by estimating the impact of ICE arrests before and after President Trump was inaugurated in January 2025.

In the final set of analyses, we turn to the broader labor market for mothers with children ages 0 to 5, asking whether the recent increase in ICE activity has affected mothers’ employment. Such an analysis is important, given that the labor force participation rate of mothers with preschool-aged children declined nearly three percentage points between January and June of 2025 and is now at its lowest level since 2021.¹² While a variety of explanations for the decline have been discussed in the popular press, to our knowledge the potential significance of ICE’s recent enforcement activity has been neglected.¹³ Such enforcement seems important, in light of research showing that previous policies like the Secure Communities program reduced the employment of high-skilled, U.S.-born mothers with young children.¹⁴ Given that families rely heavily on child care services in order to work, we examine whether the recent escalation of ICE activity has consequences for maternal employment.

Our report makes several contributions to the literature on immigration enforcement and labor markets. First, by linking newly released ICE arrest data from the Deportation Data Project to individual-level CPS data, we provide one of the first analyses of the immediate labor market consequences of a sharp escalation in interior immigration enforcement over the first few months of the new Trump administration. The analysis captures an ongoing policy shift that remains central to debates over immigration, labor shortages, and the stability of the overall economy.¹⁵ Second, our report complements previous work done by economic researchers Umair Ali and Jessica Brown, in partnership with co-author of this paper Chris Herbst, to study the impact of the Secure Communities program on child care participation and supply.¹⁶ Together, this work is important because it focuses on a critical service with high levels of immigrant labor and low wages, but whose availability and quality have implications for mothers’ employment and child development.¹⁷ Finally, we contribute to the broader debate over whether immigrant and native labor are complements or substitutes by examining an occupation where these relationships are especially salient.¹⁸ Our sectoral analysis distinguishes between center-based, home-based, and private household care, allowing us to identify where enforcement pressure is most binding and to test for potential spillovers across segments of the market. Taken together, these contributions advance our understanding of how immigration enforcement policies shape the availability of essential services and the employment opportunities for both immigrant and U.S.-born women.