Analysis · Immigration
UIC's Blitz study counts McKinley Park's losses as zero
Researchers estimate the 2025 immigration enforcement surge cost Cook County's stores and restaurants $1.26 billion a year. Their method can't book a dollar of it at a McKinley Park business. If you own one, here's why that's probably wrong, and what you can do about it.
In September, researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago's Great Cities Institute published the most careful count yet of what immigration enforcement cost local businesses. They tracked phone location data from Cook County residents through 2024 and 2025. After January 20, 2025, people living in neighborhoods with many Latin American immigrants made far fewer trips to stores and restaurants in other parts of the county. The researchers priced those missing trips at $1.26 billion in lost sales a year.
That number is a big deal for the question on your November 3 ballot, which asks whether Chicago should seek compensation from the federal government. It's also a number that leaves McKinley Park out.
The rule that skips us
UIC sorted Cook County's 4,002 block groups (Census neighborhoods of a few hundred households) by the share of residents born in Latin America. The top 40 percent, every block group above 6.8 percent, counted as "high." The study measured lost sales only at businesses in the other 60 percent: the trips that residents of high-share blocks stopped making to everywhere else.
All 11 of McKinley Park's block groups are high, from 16 percent to 28 percent Latin America-born. So when the study's $1.26 billion is split up by where the lost sales happened, McKinley Park's businesses get $0.
We're in good company. Brighton Park, Archer Heights, Pilsen and Little Village also get $0. Bridgeport, next door, gets about $2.2 million for the Blitz weeks, because some of its blocks fall under the cut and its businesses there lost customers who live in places like ours. McKinley Park residents' own missing trips, about $1.7 million worth during the Blitz, are booked at businesses in other neighborhoods.
Why the study probably misses your customers
UIC didn't assume businesses in high-share neighborhoods were fine. It checked, and its phone data showed them holding steady: visits from their own neighbors barely moved, and foot traffic at their doors fell about 1 percent. Three things make that reading shaky for McKinley Park.
First, the phones. UIC's data comes from apps that share location with a data company. Independent audits have found that panels like it under-count Hispanic residents (Li and colleagues, 2024). And people afraid of enforcement had good reasons to turn off location sharing or leave a phone at home. A customer who stopped coming, and whose phone was never in the data, looks like no change at all.
Second, the timing. UIC's 1 percent comes from January through May. Operation Midway Blitz ran from Sept. 8 to Nov. 13, when federal agents were most active in Chicago. UIC's own data on the fall can't separate the Blitz from ordinary seasonal swings.
Third, the average. The 1 percent is an average over about 1,600 high block groups, and McKinley Park sits near its middle. The average also takes in the corridors hit hardest. On 26th Street in Little Village, where blocks run 40 to 50 percent Latin America-born, owners told reporters their sales fell 40 to 70 percent during the Blitz. An average that broad can hide large losses on particular streets, ours included.
What the losses might be here
Nobody has measured McKinley Park's losses. Two outside measurements bracket them. The low one is Cicero's taxable sales, which Illinois reports every month: during the Blitz months they ran about 9 percent below the town's usual fall, in a town that's 39 percent Latin America-born. The high one is what four owners on 26th Street told reporters: a median loss of 62.5 percent. We scale each one to every block group's own share.
McKinley Park's stores and restaurants employ about 1,200 people and sell roughly $83 million in a 9.4-week stretch, priced at Cook County's sales per job. At Cicero's rate, they lost about $3.3 million during the Blitz. At the owners' rate, about $29 million. The midpoint is about $16 million. UIC's method counts none of it.
Be skeptical of the high end. Chicago's own sales-tax receipts for that fall came up short of the usual pattern by roughly $143 million citywide, and at most about $650 million. Our citywide estimate at the midpoint is about $920 million, more than the receipts allow. Across the city, the truth probably sits nearer Cicero's number. In a neighborhood like ours, it could sit higher. The data that would settle it, each business's own sales-tax filings, sits at the Illinois Department of Revenue, which doesn't publish it by neighborhood.
Estimate for your business
Enter your business's address and what it normally sells in a year. We find your block group, apply the two readings at its share, and compare them with what UIC's method books for you.
What you can do
Vote on November 3. Chicago's ballot asks: Shall the City of Chicago pursue all lawful means to recover financial compensation from the federal government for the costs and economic harm caused by the Donald Trump administration's violent, militarized ICE operations, including the Midway Blitz operation led by Greg Bovino, to recover lost tax revenue, public safety response costs, and services provided to residents and families affected by those operations?
The question is advisory. A yes vote asks the City to pursue compensation; it doesn't decide how much, or for whom.
If the City does pursue it, its count of the damage will likely start from studies like UIC's, which leave our businesses at zero. That's the case for pairing a yes vote with a call for more research: ask your alderperson (Ward 12 or Ward 11) to have the City request neighborhood sales-tax totals from the Illinois Department of Revenue, so places like McKinley Park are counted.
Tell us what you lost
If you run a business in McKinley Park, we want to hear how your sales moved during the Blitz and since: rough numbers are fine, like "about 30 percent down in October." Email harry@mckinleypark.today. We keep tips private and never publish a name or business without your permission. Please don't send anything about anyone's immigration status; we don't need it and won't use it.
How we did this
We split UIC's county total by its own rules, then added a separate estimate for businesses inside high-share neighborhoods, which UIC's total leaves out. We never add that estimate to UIC's number. Sales come from Census Bureau job counts (LEHD LODES, 2023) priced at Cook County's Economic Census sales per job. The full citywide method, the ward map and every source are in the archived citywide version of this analysis.
Sources: UIC Great Cities Institute, Hunkering Down (Wilson, Lester and Acosta-Córdova, 2026); American Community Survey 2019–2023; LEHD LODES 2023; Illinois Department of Revenue municipal sales-tax receipts; owner reports in WGN (Oct. 17, 2025), WBEZ (Nov. 21, 2025 and Feb. 20, 2026) and ABC7 (Sept. 7, 2026); Li, Ning, Jing and Lessani, PLOS ONE (2024). Data powered by Ward Wise.