RSSE: William Leroy (Faculty of Law, Charles University) Undocumented Immigration & Crime in the United States: A Micro-Level Analysis

It is our pleasure that William Leroy (Faculty of Law, Charles University) will present on Thursday, October 30, 2025, at 12:45 in room RB436 about the topic “Undocumented Immigration & Crime in the United States: A Micro-Level Analysis”.

Registration is not required and anyone who would like to attend is warmly invited.

It is also possible to participate online via MS Teams at this link. In case of any connection issues, please contact lubomir.cingl@vse.cz.

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the relationship between undocumented immigration and crime using commercial property data covering approximately 16,000 migrant hotel rooms in New York City. I exploit the timing of migrant busing from the southern border as an exogenous source of variation in a difference-in-differences specification. I find that an additional 100 migrant shelter hotel rooms (per 100k Hispanics) are associated with 1.11 more Hispanic arrests (per 100k Hispanics) at the modified zip code-by-week level. Hypergranular estimates from a linear probability model reveal that arrestees within 500 meters of a migrant hotel are 1.9 percentage points (5.5% relative to the overall mean) more likely to be Hispanic in the post-treatment period. The baseline results are driven by cash-generating offenses-such as petit and grand larceny-and hinge on access to informal construction hiring hubs. Crime reporting, law enforcement activity, and media saliency do not appear to be significant factors.

BIO: William is an applied microeconomist with an emphasis on political economy, economic history, and public economics (crime). His research aims to determine how racial issues have influenced political and public institutions in the United States. He recently graduated from department of economics at University of Maryland.