ICE OUT OR ICED OUT? The Impact of Intensifying Immigration Enforcement in 2025 and the Threat of Racial Profiling on Latino American Sporting Event Attendance

Abstract

This thesis is one of the first research papers to evaluate Latino sporting event attendance and how immigration policy could be changing their impact in the sports industry. This thesis evaluates immigration policy under the second Trump administration, and its particular impact on the Latino citizens of the United States of America and their willingness to attend major sporting events during a period with high profile immigration crackdowns. Government data and academic analysis of court documents have shown that the intensifying use of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) across the country in 2025 have led to the arrest of Latino citizens because of racial profiling, leading to questions of equity and violations of due process. This thesis attempts to answer how racial profiling by ICE may be changing Latino American behavior in the sports realm, as they are currently the most influential, engaged, and resilient group of sports fans. Using a national survey of public opinion, I investigated self-reported professional sports game attendance in the 2024, 2025, and prospective 2026 seasons as well as public opinion towards immigration enforcement. I hypothesized that Latino American attendance in 2025 decreased at a higher rate than the rest of the population because of their higher reported fear of immigration arrest. I utilized a series of Ordinary Least Squares linear regressions to analyze the potential relationship between fear of immigration arrest, mediated by an awareness of racial profiling, and reported sporting event attendance in 2025. While attendance does prove to be decreasing in the 2025 and prospective 2026 seasons, I find no relationship between fear of immigration arrest and reported attendance in 2025. Instead, I find reason to believe that it is 2026 attendance that will be most affected by increasing immigration enforcement throughout the United States. My findings suggest that Latino American citizens’ choice to attend a sporting event in 2025 may not be directly correlated with fear of immigration arrest, but these effects may start to become apparent in the future. American citizens should not be in any way concerned about being arrested by immigration enforcement, but there is evidence to suggest that Latino American citizens are concerned that ICE will arrest them, and may be changing their behavior in sports in reaction to these concerns. There are sociological implications of their changing attendance, particularly because of the identity and community building role that sports play in Latino American spaces.