We Are the Economy Too: What $1.26 Billion Tells Us About Who Powers Cook County

A new University of Illinois Chicago study set out to measure the cost of fear. What it actually proved is something Latino families have always known: we do not just support our own comunidad. We help power the entire regional economy, and when we pull back, everyone feels it.

The number

$1.26 billion. That is the estimated amount of retail and restaurant commerce lost across Cook County, Illinois during the first year of heightened federal immigration enforcement, according to Hunkering Down: The Hidden Economic Cost of Federal Immigration Enforcement in Cook County, IL, published September 8, 2026, by UIC's Great Cities Institute.

The study used weekly foot-traffic data to track something specific: how often residents of neighborhoods with a high share of Latin America born residents traveled outside those neighborhoods to shop, eat, and spend. Before January 2025, that travel was routine. Nearly four in ten visits from these neighborhoods crossed into other parts of the county.

Then the trips stopped.

This is not a story about Latino neighborhoods. It is a story about the whole county.

Here is the finding that should reframe how we talk about this. Visits to businesses inside Latino neighborhoods stayed essentially unchanged. The real damage landed somewhere else: in suburban retail corridors, at businesses owned by people of every background, who depend on Latino customers walking through their doors.

The suburban retail decline was more than twice as large as the decline in Chicago proper.

"If there's this idea that Latin American born or neighborhoods with high Latin American born shares of the population are in some way isolated, or maybe they're insular. It's not true."

- Matthew Wilson, Associate Director, Great Cities Institute, UIC

Latino families were never a separate economy sitting off to the side. We were, and are, customers at the same breweries, diners, hardware stores, and strip malls as everyone else in the county. When fear pulled that spending back, it did not just cost Latino neighborhoods. It cost the businesses that never thought of themselves as depending on us at all.

Fear, not budgets

Essential trips, to grocery stores, pharmacies, gas stations, banks, and healthcare providers, fell by 7.7 percent. That is nearly as steep as the drop in discretionary restaurant and retail spending. If this were about tighter household budgets, essential spending should have held steady while discretionary spending dropped. It did not. Both fell together, which points to something else entirely: fear of moving through unfamiliar areas at all.

"I have to go grocery shopping, but I haven't. What if ICE is there?"

         - Caridad, a Chicago waitress, via NPR, September 8, 2026

That is not an economic calculation. That is a family deciding it is safer to go without than to risk the drive to the store. Multiply that decision across hundreds of thousands of households, and the county loses $1.26 billion.

The math the county cannot ignore

Researchers checked whether that missing spending simply moved somewhere else inside the county. It did not. The Great Cities Institute found no evidence the activity relocated. It was not delayed. It was not redirected. It was gone.

Cook County lost an estimated $107 million in local sales tax revenue, money that funds schools, streets, and services used by every resident of the county, Latino and non-Latino alike.

The money did not move. It disappeared.

One detail in the study is easy to miss, and it matters. This was not a story of Latino families simply shifting where they spent, pulling back from suburban stores and redirecting that same money to Latino owned businesses closer to home instead, the very thing SVL and organizations across the country promote and advocate for every single day. Visits to businesses inside Latino neighborhoods stayed essentially flat. The money did not move. It disappeared.

That distinction matters. Even the safest, most trusted option, a neighbor's shop, a familiar face, a business built by someone who looks like them, was not enough to bring people out of their homes. This was not a community making a calculated choice about where to shop. This was a community choosing not to leave home at all.

We are not a separate economy operating alongside everyone else's. We are part of the same one: the same stores, the same restaurants, the same breweries, the same tax base that funds the same schools and streets. When fear drives us out of that shared economy, the county doesn't lose a Latino problem. It loses $1.26 billion, $107 million in tax revenue, and the customers that suburban businesses, owned by every background, actually depend on.

The pattern beyond Chicago

Cook County is not an isolated case. Minneapolis estimates total economic damage from ICE enforcement sweeps at nearly $700 million, with small businesses losing more than $81 million in revenue in a single month. A Brookings Institution analysis found a roughly 1.7 percentage point decline in aggregate consumer spending across states with high enforcement activity.

In SVL's own Latino Business Survey, conducted in November and December 2025 across California, Oregon, Texas, Florida, and North Carolina, business owners named immigration enforcement and declining consumer confidence among their top concerns. Not as political opinions. As daily business realities they were already living.

Closer to home: what we heard directly

This pattern is not abstract to us. In June 2025, SVL reported directly from Los Angeles on what Latino owned businesses themselves were experiencing under the same enforcement climate this UIC study now measures at the county level.

A bakery owner in Boyle Heights told us: "I built this business over 15 years. I lost half my staff in one day." She called it worse than COVID.

Juan Ibarra, who owns a produce market, watched daily revenue fall from $2,000 to $300. A restaurant owner reported losing $7,000 a week. Luis, a hot dog vendor, described a severe and immediate drop in income.

"Employees are scared, tenants are scared and customers are scared. We are all indirectly impacted by the raids and what this administration is doing to our community."

- Barney Santos, LA County Department of Economic Development, speaking directly to SVL

Two different studies, two different cities, the same pattern: fear moves through a community and the economy feels it, whether the business owner is Latino or not.

What you can do

Every dollar spent at a Latino owned business is proof of what this report already shows: that our comunidad is not separate from the American economy. We are one of the engines that keeps it running.

Shop. Visit ShopLatino.Market to find and support Latino owned businesses near you. Every purchase keeps that engine turning.

Share this article. The more people understand how connected we all actually are, the harder it becomes to treat this as someone else's problem.

Read the full UIC report at greatcities.uic.edu.

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Sources

Great Cities Institute, University of Illinois Chicago. Hunkering Down: The Hidden Economic Cost of Federal Immigration Enforcement in Cook County, IL. September 8, 2026.

NPR. New report shows the economic toll of ICE raids. September 8, 2026.

Brookings Institution. ICE Enforcement Employment Effects in U.S. Cities.

City of Minneapolis. Economic impact assessment, January 2025.

SVL Latino Business Survey. November to December 2025.

Silicon Valley Latino. When Resilience Is Raided: The Unseen Toll on Latino Entrepreneurs. June 17, 2025.

Reuters. Immigration raids in Los Angeles hit small business owners: It's worse than COVID. June 17, 2025.

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