California just got kneecapped by a jobs crash so sharp it made the Great Recession look like a fender-bender. And no, it wasn’t a stock market crash or a wildfire or even another tech bubble popping.
It was good ol’ fashioned jackboot immigration enforcement.
Yep. Turns out when you send federal agents storming into garment factories, kitchens, and fruit-packing sheds like they’re kicking down doors in Narcos, the economy doesn’t give you a medal. It gives you a pink slip.
UC Merced’s researchers, drawing on monthly Census data, did what our leaders should be doing: connecting the dots. And those dots lead straight to a clear conclusion—this crackdown didn’t just hurt undocumented workers. It hurt everyone.
The researchers found that in the week after Trump’s crew stepped up immigration raids in California, private-sector employment dropped by 3.1%. Let me spell that out for you: that’s the second-steepest employment nosedive in modern California history—right behind COVID lockdowns. Worse than 2008. Worse than the dot-com bust. Worse than the time the Dodgers traded Fernando.
And here’s the kicker: more citizens than non-citizens reported being out of work. Let me say that again for the folks watching Fox After Dark—ICE raids didn’t just target the undocumented. They cratered entire job sites. That sewing machine doesn’t hum if the cutter’s gone. The drywall doesn’t hang itself. The salsa doesn’t stir solo.
Edward Flores at UC Merced spelled it out plain: immigrant labor isn’t isolated. It’s the starter motor in a complex engine. Disrupt one piece, and the whole damn truck stalls.
We’re talking about 271,000 citizens and 193,000 non-citizens who are suddenly not working. That’s not a ripple. That’s an undertow. That’s meat off the bones of the local taqueria, the mechanic, the after-school tutor. It’s your neighbor losing a shift, your cousin getting fewer hours, your kid’s classroom suddenly missing a parent volunteer who vanished in an early morning raid.
And who took the biggest hit? Latinos and whites—5.6% and 5.3% drops, respectively. So this wasn’t just “them” being targeted. It was us all getting clipped, across race and ZIP code.
But don’t expect our political class to react like it’s a five-alarm fire. Governor Gavin “Hair Gel and Hesitation” Newsom issued some fine-sounding words about Trump’s “cruel raids,” but when the time came to show up with cash and compassion, he turned his veto pen into a weapon. Twice now, he’s blocked attempts to extend unemployment benefits to undocumented workers—even as his own Finance Department admits these deportation campaigns could “significantly degrade” the labor force.
And degrade it did. Like dropping a wrench into a gearbox.
Now, let’s be honest. We’ve always known the economy depends on undocumented labor. The crops don’t pick themselves. The roofs don’t tile themselves. The elder care doesn’t compassionately perform itself while earning less than minimum wage. But it’s easier for politicians to blame the undocumented than admit the truth—that our prosperity rests on their shoulders.
And when you knock those shoulders out from under us? We all fall down.
Let’s quit pretending these are isolated incidents. Let’s stop playing “good immigrant/bad immigrant” like it’s a damn game show. This is systemic sabotage. You can’t eject hundreds of thousands of workers and expect Main Street to hum along like nothing happened.
If you’re still clinging to the fantasy that ICE is just “enforcing the law” while the economy stays immune, you need to put down the Kool-Aid and pick up a job application—because that fantasy is sending your neighbors to the unemployment line.
So what now?
How about a little political courage? Maybe some economic relief that includes everyone who lost work, regardless of immigration status. Maybe a safety net that doesn’t have a citizenship check at the bottom. Maybe we admit that when low-income families lose wages, we all lose sales, tax revenue, and dignity.
And maybe, just maybe, we stop lighting our own house on fire just to chase out one undocumented cook.
Otherwise, get ready to hear that sound again—that’s not ICE boots. That’s your local economy wheezing through another self-inflicted recession.