Data and Code for: Community Engagement and Public Safety: Evidence from Crime Enforcement Targeting Immigrants

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Elisa Jacome, Northwestern University; Felipe Goncalves, UCLA; Emily Weisburst, UCLA

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
analysis			01/06/2026 12:13:PM
build			01/06/2026 12:13:PM
README.pdf	application/pdf	188 KB	06/26/2026 11:13:AM
_paths.do	text/plain	1.5 KB	06/12/2026 08:48:AM
_run_all_analysis.do	text/plain	2.6 KB	06/10/2026 03:14:PM
_run_all_build.do	text/plain	4.1 KB	10/17/2025 01:37:PM

Project Citation:

Jacome, Elisa, Goncalves, Felipe , and Weisburst, Emily . Data and Code for: Community Engagement and Public Safety: Evidence from Crime Enforcement Targeting Immigrants. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2026. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2026-07-06. https://doi.org/10.3886/E242546V1

Project Description

Summary: Replication package for "Community Engagement and Public Safety: Evidence from Crime Enforcement Targeting Immigrants."

We study the role of victim reporting in the production of public safety. We examine the Secure Communities program, a crime-reduction policy that involved police in detecting unauthorized immigrants and increased deportation fears in immigrant communities. We find that the policy reduced the likelihood that Hispanic victims report crimes to police and increased offending against Hispanics. The number of reported crimes is unchanged, masking these opposing effects. We show that reduced reporting drives the offending increase and provide the first elasticity of offending to victim reporting in the literature, calculating that a 10% decline in reporting increases offending by 7.9%.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: public safety; community engagement; victim reporting; secure communities

JEL Classification:
      J15 Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
      K37 Immigration Law
      K42 Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

Geographic Coverage: United States

Time Period(s): 2006 – 2015

Universe: Persons age 12 and older living in the United States between 2005 and 2015

Data Type(s): administrative records data; census/enumeration data; geographic information system (GIS) data; program source code; survey data

Methodology

Data Source:

National Crime Victimization Survey 2006-2015
TRAC data on ICE detainers and removals
TRAC data on sources of ICE arrests
Secure Communities activation dates
Dates of 287(g) agreements
Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) data
Tract-level data on arrests and 911 calls
American Community Survey (ACS)
County and Census tract-level data from U.S. Census Bureau
Unemployment and CPI data from from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
County presidential election results, from MIT Election Data and Science Lab
List of counties on US-Mexico border

Unit(s) of Observation: Individuals, Counties, Census tracts

Related Publications

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Published Versions

V1 [2026-07-06]

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Dublin Core

DDI 2.5

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