How Stop-and-Frisk Affected Undocumented Students’ Performance

Amy Hsin , Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY)
Linna Marten, Stanford University
Niklas Harder, Stanford University

The New York City Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program has stopped and briefly detained millions of New York residents during the last decade, aiming to reduce crimes. It has been widely criticized for being inefficient and discriminatory, as few arrests are made and racial and ethnic minorities are stopped more often than whites. This paper examines if the program affects the life of unauthorized immigrants, who are likely to be particularly wary of interacting with the police. We combine data on police stops around university campuses with individual-level administrative data on student’s performance and documentation status. The results show that undocumented students’ study performance, relative to students with legal status, is adversely affected by the the number of stops around campus. The result illustrate that stop-and-frisk and related police tactics have unintended spill-over effects on the behavior of unauthorized immigrants.

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 Presented in Session 240. Migration and Educational Outcomes