Immigration arrests and midlife cognitive health in the United States

Intensified immigration enforcement is a salient feature of contemporary U.S. sociopolitical environments with implications for healthy aging. This study examines whether immigration arrest rates are associated with working memory in early midlife and whether associations vary across ethnoracial groups.

Using longitudinal data from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we assessed associations between county-level Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrest rates and working memory measured via backward digit span recall at Wave VI. ICE rates were operationalized as the average number of arrests per 1,000 foreign-born adults in the prior year and linked to respondents' county of residence at Wave V. Poisson regression models estimated associations across ethnoracial groups, with stratified analyses among Latinx and Asian respondents. Sensitivity analysis using multiple imputation assessed robustness to missing data.

Latinx respondents residing in counties with higher ICE arrest rates exhibited significantly lower backward digit span recall relative to White respondents. No such associations were observed among Black or Asian respondents. The association was observed among U.S.-born Latinx respondents, and there was no evidence of nativity differences, but statistical power to detect those differences was limited. Sensitivity analyses produced similar results.

Findings suggest that immigration enforcement environments may be unevenly related to cognitive functioning across ethnoracial groups and that these associations may extend to U.S.-born members of racialized communities. By establishing a midlife cognitive benchmark, this study provides a foundation for future research on the relationship between immigration enforcement contexts and cognitive aging trajectories.