Macroeconomic Anxiety and Executive Political Incentives: Explaining Deportation Policy Changes Across Administrations from 2002-2022

In this thesis, I look at what drives U.S. deportation policy between 2002 and 2020. Many people assume that immigration enforcement is mostly about political party differences or changes in migration patterns, but I challenge that assumption. I use monthly data on formal removals and run regression analyses to see how labor-market conditions, presidential approval, and economic uncertainty affect deportation numbers. The results suggest an association between rising deportations and the president’s approval rating dropping when unemployment rises. This suggests that enforcement is less about broad economic uncertainty and more about economic anxiety and political pressure on the president.   By combining both contemporaneous and lagged data, I examine how these pressures work over time. This shows that deportation policy does not change quickly but instead moves through slow institutional processes. Political and economic pressures shape enforcement over time. The research shows that deportation is often used as a political tool to address public concerns and to signal that the government is in control during unstable times. Even though different administrations may talk about immigration differently, the actual enforcement remains mostly the same. This shows a gap between what is said about immigration and what happens. My study adds to the discussion by showing how political incentives and labor-market stress shape enforcement, and it brings up important questions about who is held accountable and whether the policy is fair.