As many immigrant families sheltered at home during the January ICE surge, and some businesses closed, retail sales fell by $3.4 million in some of Maine's largest metro regions, according to a new estimate from the Maine Center for Economic Policy, a progressive advocacy group.
Policy analyst James Myall said he used student absentee data as an indicator of how many families were staying home over a 10-day period in the Portland, Lewiston, and Biddeford-Saco areas.
"If that many kids were staying home from school," Myall said, "what did that mean for adults in the broader community who might not be going out and buying groceries or getting their hair cut or filling out the gas tank or whatever it might be."
Myall said it's difficult to pinpoint precise numbers at such a granular scale, but that the broader toll of lost economic activity during the surge could be somewhere between $10 million and $22 million.
"These kind of attacks on immigrants hurt us all by reducing the size of the workforce, reducing kind of business activity," he said.
Myall said the report tracks with data from other states showing a decrease in retail sales during large-scale ICE operations.
