Tag Archives | Foreclosures

Deporting the American Dream: Immigration Enforcement and Latino Foreclosures

Jacob S. Rugh, Matthew Hall

Sociological Science, December 8, 2016
DOI 10.15195/v3.a46

Over the past decade, Latinos have been buffeted by two major forces: a record number of immigrant deportations and the housing foreclosure crisis. Yet, prior work has not assessed the link between the two. We hypothesize that deportations exacerbate rates of foreclosure among Latinos by removing income earners from owner-occupied households. We employ a quasi-experimental approach that leverages variation in county applications for 287(g) immigration enforcement agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and data on foreclosure filings from 2005–2012. These models uncover a substantial association of enforcement with Hispanic foreclosure rates. The association is stronger in counties with more immigrant detentions and a larger share of undocumented persons in owner-occupied homes. The results imply that local immigration enforcement plays an important role in understanding why Latinos experienced foreclosures most often. The reduced home ownership and wealth that result illustrate how legal status and deportation perpetuate the racial stratification of Latinos.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Jacob S. Rugh: Department of Sociology, Brigham Young University
Email: jacob_rugh@byu.edu

Matthew Hall: Department of Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University
Email: mhall@cornell.edu

Acknowledgements: We are very grateful to Jim Bachmeier for county unauthorized data and to Stephanie Potochnick, Juan Pedroza, and William Rosales for sharing 287(g) rejection FOIAs. We also thank Doug Massey, Jordan Matsudaira, Jody Vallejo, Scott Sanders, and Jon Jarvis for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.



  • Citation: Rugh, Jacob S., and Matthew Hall. 2016. “Deporting the American Dream: Immigration Enforcement and Latino Foreclosures.” Sociological Science 3: 1053-1076.
  • Received: September 26, 2016
  • Accepted: November 2, 2016
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Stephen Morgan
  • DOI: 10.15195/v3.a46


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