Midway Blitz impacts, block by block
Researchers at UIC's Great Cities Institute estimate that the 2025 immigration enforcement surge cost Cook County businesses about $1.26 billion a year in lost sales. Their number covers the whole county. For your ward or your block, the answer depends on a few choices we made, and we explain each one. We walk through them and estimate the loss for your own business. The last slide covers the question on your November 3 ballot.
UIC marks a number from the research; added marks a choice we made to apply it to your ward. Every step in more detail is in the full method. Data powered by Ward Wise.
What the research found
UICWho is exposed
The whole county lived under the same federal enforcement, so UIC's researchers needed a way to tell more-exposed neighborhoods from less-exposed ones. They used each census block group's share of residents born in Latin America, from the American Community Survey, and labeled the top 40 percent of the county's 4,002 block groups "high Latin America-born". That cut falls at a 6.8% share. The measure stands in for mixed-status households and the people around them, and it describes neighborhoods, not individuals.
Source: Wilson, Lester and Acosta-Córdova, Hunkering Down, Great Cities Institute, 2026. We rebuilt the classification from the same ACS table and got 1,597 high block groups to their 1,598.
UICAfter January 20, trips across the county fell
UIC's team followed the trips that residents of high Latin America-born neighborhoods made to stores and restaurants in other parts of the county. After January 20, 2025, those trips fell, and they fell further in neighborhoods with a larger Latin America-born share (a dose-response difference-in-differences design). At the average high block group, retail trips dropped about 9 percent and restaurant trips about 10 percent in the first 19 weeks. By week 46 the drop had grown.
log(1 + visits_it) = α_i + λ_t + β · Post_t · share_i
effect at share T = e^(β·T) − 1
Suburban residents cut these retail trips about twice as much as Chicago residents did (−13 against −6 percent). Restaurant trips fell by similar amounts in both (−8 and −10).
UICWhat the missing trips were worth
UIC turned visits into dollars by dividing Cook County's Economic Census receipts, in 2025 dollars, by the visits recorded in the same panel. That works out to $58 per retail visit and $33 per restaurant visit. About 18 million retail visits and 7 million restaurant visits went missing each year, worth $1.04B and $0.22B.
Together that is $1.26B a year, with a 95 percent confidence interval of $0.83B to $1.67B. At an 8.5 percent blended rate, governments lost $107M in sales tax.
The question
Your ward's share of $1.26 billion
UIC's estimate covers all of Cook County for a year of enforcement. You probably want two narrower numbers: what your ward's businesses lost, and how much of that fell in the ten weeks of Operation Midway Blitz.
UIC published nothing below the county level, and its foot-traffic panel is private. So we wrote down rules that carry the county number to block groups and back up to wards. You can change each rule on the ward map.
From the county to your ward
addedStep one: spread the baseline, apply the dose
UIC published only the average number of weekly trips per high block group in each region. We split each region's total across its high block groups by population, then applied UIC's dose-response at each block group's own share, so a 40 percent block group loses a larger slice of its trips than a 10 percent one does. Multiplying by UIC's dollars per visit gives each block group's withdrawn spending.
withdrawn_i = 52 × B_region × N_high × pop_i/Pop_high × (1 − e^(β·share_i)) × $/visit
Summed over the county without adjustment, our version comes to $1.40B against UIC's $1.26B, so we scale ours down to match theirs.
addedStep two: where the trips would have gone
UIC's panel recorded where each withdrawn trip would have ended, but the published results don't say. We filled that gap with a gravity model. Each neighborhood's withdrawn dollars go to low Latin America-born block groups in proportion to how many stores and restaurants they have, discounted with distance (exponential decay over 3 miles for Chicago residents and 5 miles for suburban residents).
lost_d = Σ_i withdrawn_i × mass_d · e^(−dist_id/λ) / Σ_d′ mass_d′ · e^(−dist_id′/λ)
This is our softest step. Changing the distance setting moves losses between downtown and the suburbs, and the county total stays the same.
addedStep three: the Blitz weeks
Operation Midway Blitz ran 9.4 weeks, from September 8, 2025 until most Border Patrol agents left on November 13. UIC didn't estimate the Blitz on its own. Its trip losses grew from 9 percent over the first 19 weeks to 12 percent for retail and 16 percent for restaurants over 46 weeks, so the later weeks ran deeper. We price the Blitz weeks at that later rate, and the map also offers the year average.
ICE's arrest records back up the timing. The Deportation Data Project's files show about 3,470 ICE arrests in Illinois in those weeks, 6.6 times the weekly pace earlier in 2025, and ICE recorded 42% of them in Chicago. Border Patrol led the Blitz on the street and its arrests are missing from that release, so the real increase was larger.
window = annual × weeks/52 × depth
Inside immigrant neighborhoods
UICaddedThe businesses on 26th Street
UIC's panel shows businesses inside high Latin America-born neighborhoods holding roughly steady: foot traffic there fell about 1% from January to May, and visits from their own neighbors didn't change. Four owners on 26th Street told reporters their sales fell 40 to 70% during the Blitz (WGN, WBEZ, WBEZ, ABC7). We found no chamber or survey figure.
Both accounts can hold. Phone-location panels like UIC's under-count Hispanic residents, and people afraid of enforcement had reasons to stop carrying a traceable phone. UIC's 1% also averages about 1,600 block groups, most of them 7 to 20% Latin America-born, while the 26th Street blocks run 40 to 50%, and UIC measured it before the Blitz began.
We report this as its own line and never add it to UIC's total. Two measurements bound it: Illinois sales-tax receipts put Cicero (39% Latin America-born) 9% below its usual fall, and the four owners report a median loss of 62.5%. By default we use the midpoint of the two, scaled to each block group's share and applied to every business in a high block group. The map and the estimator let you switch to either end.
lost_inside_i = receipts_i × rate(share_i)
receipts_i = retail jobs_i × $459k + restaurant jobs_i × $102k
We price each block group's sales from the retail and restaurant jobs that the Census Bureau's LEHD LODES counts there in 2023, at Cook County's Economic Census sales per job.
addedWhat actual sales show
Illinois publishes each municipality's sales-tax receipts, a direct record of taxable sales. During the Blitz months, sales in the high-share suburbs (about 19% Latin America-born) ran 3.4% below their earlier 2025 level, and Cicero (39%) ran 8 to 10% below its own seasonal pattern. The solid curve extends the suburban figure to other shares: 6.9% at 39% and 8.2% at a 26th Street block group's 47%. We chose the curve's shape, and the data don't pin it down.
The tax figures cover every storefront in a municipality. The orange dots are four storefronts on the hardest-hit corridor whose owners chose to talk to reporters, each comparing the Blitz with their own sense of a normal fall. UIC's 1% comes from a phone panel that probably misses the most exposed households. The truth on 26th Street likely falls between the curve and the dots, and no public record says where. The shaded band runs from Cicero's sales up to the owners' median, both scaled by share, and our default sits at its middle.
rate(share) = 1 − exp(β · share)
suburban average: β = ln(1 − 0.034) / 0.19 ≈ −0.18
Cicero (low): β = ln(1 − 0.0915) / 0.39 ≈ −0.25
owners (high): β = ln(1 − 0.625) / 0.376 ≈ −2.61
default: the midpoint of low and high
What it adds up to
Who withdrew the spending
Ward totals here use the default settings: UIC's headline outside immigrant neighborhoods and the midpoint reading inside them, for September 8 to November 13, 2025.
Whose businesses lost the sales
The map adds both lines. Wards made up almost entirely of high Latin America-born block groups, like the 12th and the 22nd, show only the inside line, because their residents' missing trips were to businesses elsewhere. The toggle sets which reading colors the map, and hovering a ward shows all three. The owner-report reading assumes every business in those block groups lost as much as the four owners did, so treat it as an upper bound.
Your choice of source moves the estimate 35-fold
Outside immigrant neighborhoods we anchor to UIC, and the figure barely changes. Inside them, the figure depends on whose evidence you accept. For Chicago businesses in the Blitz weeks, UIC's phone panel puts the loss at … and the owner reports put it at …, with Cicero's tax receipts (…) in between. We show the midpoint, …, to start the conversation.
Settling it takes the business-by-business sales-tax filings that the Illinois Department of Revenue holds. A City inquiry could request them.
Chicago's own sales tax caps the loss near $650M
Each total includes the … that we carry from UIC's estimate outside immigrant neighborhoods. October 2024 carries a one-off statewide catch-up in receipts, so the 2024 pattern gives a generous top. From January 2025 Illinois counts Chicago residents' online orders as Chicago sales, and those orders can mask part of a drop at storefronts.
What the estimate leaves out
Everything here allocates UIC's published estimate, and none of it is legal advice. UIC's numbers produce the county total; every choice about which storefront gets what is ours, and each carries an "added" badge. The estimate covers in-person retail and restaurant sales only.
It leaves out closures and the stores that never opened: Chicago's high Latin America-born block groups got 13% fewer new retail and restaurant licenses during the Blitz than a year earlier, while lapses held steady. It also leaves out lost wages, unpaid rent, missed medical visits and children kept home from school, and it says nothing about who is liable. The ballot question asks the City to find out.
Your business
How much does ICE owe your business?
We estimate the loss for a typical store or restaurant at your address and scale it to your sales if you enter them. Only the address leaves your browser, to the Census Bureau's geocoder.
Your vote
On November 3, vote on it
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?
We can size one item on that list, lost tax revenue. In the Blitz weeks alone, Chicago businesses lost about … in sales and the City about … in its own sales tax, at the midpoint reading (… across the range). That figure swings several-fold with the source, so the City would need the state's business-level tax records to know what it is owed. Public-safety costs and services to families come on top.
Polls are open 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3. Early voting is open now at more than 50 sites, and you can vote at any of them.
The question is advisory: a yes vote asks the City to pursue compensation. Separately, residents have filed federal tort claims for injuries during the operation. The Illinois State Board of Elections runs the polling-place lookup in English, Spanish, Chinese and Hindi. Sources: NBC Chicago, Block Club, WBEZ. More: the ward map and the full method.