Kansas City lost nearly 8,000 jobs due to immigration enforcement. But communities remain resilient

Support for KCUR's up-to-date podcast comes from Arvest Bank, believing that financial confidence should be within reach for everyone. Whether you're just getting started, planning for your future, or starting a new chapter, Arvest is here to help you plan and meet your goals every step of the way. Details at ourvest.com or 20 locations throughout Kansas City. The iconic bomb pop was invented in Kansas City in 1955. But how exactly did it achieve deep freeze dessert dominance? Join KCUR for People's History of Kansas City live. Monday, August 31st at the ship in the West Scott Bottoms. Tickets are at kCUR.org slash bomb pop. From K-CURR, this is Up to Date with Steve Kraski. I'm producer Elizabeth Ruiz. The fear of immigration agents has some people who are living in the Kansas City metro without legal status, changing their routine. Work hours and lunch stops have shifted, and some immigrants are getting maintenance done on their vehicles to lessen the chance for a run-in with law enforcement. The 2025 ice surge resulted in a 93% jump in arrests and nearly 8,000 jobs lost in the Kansas City Metro. Increased enforcement is creating fear that's rippling through industries and neighborhoods, creating a complicated economic impact. To talk more about it, Steve is joined by Mary Sanchez. She's a nationally syndicated columnist with Tribune Content Agency. She's also been a metro columnist for the Kansas City Star and a member of the Star's editorial board. Let's listen. Well, some immigrants in Kansas City are trying to find ways to stay out of sight and out of mind of federal immigration and customs enforcement agents. They're skipping their normal lunch spots and changing their hours. Tell us about that. Well, that portion of the story, I mean, that was kind of somewhat, you know, definitely thought out by me because you just keep hearing so much. This has gone on so long, this increased enforcement that, you know, you're obviously seeing a lot of ripple effects and how it's affecting people, frankly, whether they're documented or not. Even people who are are changing their behavior. They're getting creative about what they need to do to avoid an encounter with an ICE agent or a police officer. Or anyone, even though most law enforcement. you know, tries to really differentiate between immigration is a federal action. You know, KCPD does not enforce federal immigration law. You could say it over and over and over again, but people are fearful of any type of law enforcement, which is one of the backlash, just the problems of this ratcheted up, you know, type of enforcement that we've seen. But people are shifting how they function in their daily lives. And some of it... This was, to me, you know, a lot of the messaging that you hear in media in general is about fear. Oh my gosh, everyone's fearful. Fearful, fearful, fearful, fearful. And that's true, but it's only true to a point. There is also...

a lot of resilience. And I knew that. And personally, I mean, I find it, it was kind of even offensive that this narrative has grown so large as if everyone's like cowering in a corner. And they're not. They're doing what they need to do to try and protect their jobs, their families. homes that they've bought, everything that they have built here. And you can argue about, you know, immigration law enforcement, how things should be managed. But there's just a lot of resilience. And so part of that article was I wanted to show that. And it is a bit nuanced because people are changing their behavior. It is true that they're shifting. But they're standing firm at the same time. Many are. And some have left. Some have, you know, remove themselves from the country and some are considering it. That is true. But everything's only true to a point. And I think it would be wrong to continue pushing this idea that everyone is just, you know, wilting. Yeah. Because they're really not. You know, what happened here, Mary, because at least initially, the president talked about a crackdown on violent and repeat criminal offenders when it came to this issue. But that really hasn't been the case. In fact, you hear now about agents having these quotas, these daily quotas that they have to meet. So what happened here? Well, and this is part of how the fear has gone up so much. I mean, people, I think, don't realize that we've always had immigration in this area. We're a huge federal workforce here. You know, way back when it was still INS, which is pre-September 11th, 9-11, and after that was when Department of Homeland Security was created in ICE. We've always had enforcement. But it largely was done. out of the public's eye. There was a lot. If someone had committed, you know, an immigrant had committed a violent crime, they're convicted, they're in prison, when they finish their time, serving their time, doing the justice of that, then they would be picked up perhaps and deported. And then there were other cases, certainly. We've always had an immigration court here. But an awful lot of it just happened out of the public eye. It wasn't these type of provocative sweeps, which were done to create havoc. I mean, fear is kind of the motive. They'll talk about that. That's not like me just ratcheting this up. It's intentional. It's sending a message. Yeah. If you're illegal, get out of the country. Exactly. That was part of how they. you know, wanted to achieve these goals. And now the most recent is 2,000 arrests a day nationwide. Now, that hasn't been achieved as far as we know, you know, all of your data gatherings a little bit behind. You know, it's not currently up to date, but about 14,000 was in early July. That was the number that was being detained daily.

You talked about folks being resilient here, but adjusting, in some cases, adjusting their routines to avoid encounters with ICE or with police. You also mentioned little things like car repairs to ensure that they're not an easy target. What are you talking about on that front? Well, that's part of how people are careful. I've even heard people who are, say, they're a DACA recipient, so they have a temporary protected status against being removed. They'll ensure always that their car is full of gas. And they will or not go to certain places that have been known as spots where someone has been picked up by eyes. They'll avoid it. Or one person told me about... You know, there's this, like, sinking feeling they'll pull into, you know, not to bad mouth, you know, like a quick trip has been one of the cases, Conoco, a couple weeks ago, up in the Northeast, and look around, and if they see an unmarked... truck or something that looks like it might be that they just get this sinking filling and then it's like what do you do do you freeze it's like fight flight or freeze if you try and leave does that make you more of a target if you stay there is are you more of a target and it's this anxiety but they have to make a decision and they are making decisions daily about how they function in our community. I'm guessing this also includes things like making sure that when you flip on your right blinker, that the right blinker light on the back of the car is actually working. Absolutely. And, you know, the shout out that was in the story, the Kansas City Democratic Socialists of America, they've done, I think, three so far of these kind of like drive-through clinics where you can get your back tail light and your turn signals fixed for free. And they've done several hundred. I went to one that was held up in the Northland in a church parking lot. And it was a horribly hot day on a Saturday. So they had a little bit less traffic or, you know, people coming through. But they'll be doing more of those just so that people can eliminate any sort of possibility that they might be pulled over. And I mean, that's thinking ahead. That's managing yourself in a situation so that you don't end up encountered by an agent. Yeah. You mentioned this notion of ICE agents intentionally trying to sow fear, and that's what... some of these high-profile raids are all about. But polls suggest that Americans are really fed up with this. Has the administration backed off the sort of some of the more violent activities that ICE agents have been accused of doing? Well, under Holman, after Kristi Noem left as Department of Homeland Security, there was a lot of conversation that he would do things differently. And you haven't seen some of the sweeps like you did in.

LA, Minneapolis, Chicago. And frankly, we did not have those here. We haven't. There have been workplace raids that deal, we think, probably more with hiring. It's more on the business, but it's like collateral damage. Whoever is there ends up getting picked up as well. There's a lot of conversation about things will shift. And it is somewhat, but you still have problems because now you have people dying in detention or the administration changed their rules about when they would notify media about a death. And so people have died after they have been released because people do sometimes get out. Yeah. And then say there was a death and then you don't find, media doesn't find out about it until later because it's not being reported. So everything's always just this kind of shifting of how they're going to target. The 2000 a day was something that came up, I think about a month ago. That was some of the advisors they thought out of the White House that had pushed that. They haven't reached that goal. It's constantly shifting. So we're reporting on this as a moving target is what you're suggesting. You know, Brookings study looked at arrests that were deemed excessive and how that equated to job losses. What did that study find? Well, they found about $668,000, I think, throughout 2025. So again, we're looking at last year, that that was the number of jobs that they said had been lost in the U.S. economy nationwide that they could peg to what they called excessive arrest, just this kind of ratcheted up. done, immigration enforcement done differently than had it had, than it had been done prior under a different administration. And those job losses were not just undocumented people, jobs that they had held, but it's kind of the ripple effect of how economics works that... Other people, U.S. born, American-born people, U.S. citizens had also lost jobs as an impact. And that's a little bit harder for people to wrap their heads around. Sort of collateral damage is what you're suggesting. Kind of. That's our own economy being hit. Yeah. And, you know, that's a little bit rougher. That's this, you know, how you do things, who you target, and what is the broader impact on communities? Because if you remove someone, then their family doesn't have money. to go out and spend in other ways. Or a business that has been affected more deeply, they might cut back on the projects that they're going to do. And that can affect U.S.-born workers. Stick around. We'll be back in just a moment.

When you support KCUR, you help connect our community. This August, take another meaningful step to continue that impact. KCUR is offering free access to giving docs, a simple, secure way to create your will. Go to kCUR.org slash will. We've all been there. You're gardening, having fun, right up till you spot a spider, a snake, a bee, and you panic. It was enough to make me freak out, and honestly, some days not even want to go to the greenhouse. I was conflicted with doing something I love, but having this fear of doing it. Animal fears are common, but there are ways to lessen the anxiety, a story about overcoming critter fears that's on the podcast Up From Dust from KCUR. We're talking about the impact of immigration enforcement and how it impacts our economy. This idea that the administration has pushed is that removing people without legal status from jobs, hey, that means more jobs for Americans. At least that's the narrative the Trump administration puts out. But your story suggests it's more complicated than that. Yes. And the Brookings Institution study goes pretty deep into economics. You know, and they really do thoroughly explain it, even for different sectors that they were looking at, different work sectors, you know, construction, food service. And they found that the impact was even broader. And a lot of it is just to understand that it's not a one-to-one. It's not like every, say, an undocumented immigrant that you remove from... a work in a kitchen is going to suddenly be replaced by a U.S. born person. I mean, you've heard that for years, that particularly in hard manual labor jobs, the U.S. workers don't tend to just backfill. No matter how much you offer them for the pay, they don't. And how does that affect? sectors and the economy. The other thing that people don't realize is that there's so many families who are mixed status. They'll have, I mean, this is probably more common than not. It's not like a whole family is undocumented. you'll have several members who are, several members who aren't. So if you remove one person, what does that do to the whole family? Some can still continue working. Some can't. But yet you've decreased basically their GDP as a family unit. Yeah. You mentioned construction and food service. Are those the industries that have been hit hardest? Those are the easiest to track. Right. Okay. I don't, you know, again, everything is just kind of moving and cumulative. So I don't think we know yet. And that would be probably for more of a perhaps lower wage, not college educated person. You've also seen enforcement, though, as things are changing. You know, Haitians now are being targeted. There's 350,000 of them. They had temporary protected status. People that were in different categories, asylum seekers.

That's different as well. The outreach of who is being targeted is reaching into a broader demographic of our immigrant population. To that point, Edgar Galicia, the executive director of the Central Avenue Betterment Association in KCK, told you that he accepted the fact that federal agents are acting under a legal framework, but he also said that many of those agents are stepping outside of that framework. Is that what you're referring to here? Well, that's kind of, no, what I'm talking about is just different categories, people who had like a temporary status. Immigration is like a process that you move through. It's not quite as... You know, yes, no, it's I'm on my way towards gaining this approval as I go through the system. And what he was talking about is that he understands there's a reason for immigration law. Yeah. But this type of more violent actions, more public actions, targeting anyone almost racially profiling in some cases, that's been gone through the courts in California. Yeah. That sort of thing is what people do not want to see. There's a lot of nuance here, isn't there? There's a lot of nuance here. That was Mary Sanchez speaking with our host, Steve Kraski. Up to date is a production of KCUR, and this episode was produced by me, Elizabeth Ruiz. Thanks for listening. We'll be back soon.

Back in the 90s, a couple of guys broke into an abandoned farmhouse in Kansas, and they found a trove of artifacts from one of the country's first known female commercial tattoo artists. They had needles, inks. Today, the relics are worth tens of thousands of dollars. Listen on a people's history of Kansas City.