"Do Immigration Raids Deter Head Start Enrollment?"

Assistant Professor Jade Jenkins published an article with colleagues in ​American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings on the local deterrence effect of immigration raids on Hispanic Head Start enrollment.

The title of the article is Do Immigration Raids Deter Head Start Enrollment?

Co-authors are Robert Santillano (Mathematica) and Stephanie Potochnick (University of North Carolina at Charlotte).

Jenkins studies early childhood development, child and family policy, and policy analysis and management. She is director of UCI's Early Policy Research Group. Jenkins's work focuses on program evaluation and understanding the mechanisms that promote child and family wellbeing. She currently is researching factors in persistence and fadeout of early childhood intervention on a grant funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Development.  

​Abstract

​We investigate the local deterrence effect of immigration raids on Hispanic Head Start enrollment. Using a nationwide panel of raids from 2006 to 2008, a time of intensified immigration enforcement across communities in the US, we find robust evidence that raids decreased Hispanic Head Start enrollment by around 10 percent. We disentangle this impact and find evidence that this decrease is driven by a deterrence effect rather than a mobility effect, which suggests that families are staying in their communities but not enrolling their children in Head Start.