Gasoline demand drops as U.S. cracks down on illegal immigrants

communities,” Paul Cheng, an equities research analyst at Barclays Plc in New York, said.

In the first five months of 2017, sales at filling stations slid 1.6 per cent, compared with a 0.5 per cent increase in the same period a year earlier, according to Oil Price Information Service data.

Just how much gasoline is used by undocumented workers isn’t known. But the populations are significant. In 2014, California had an estimated 2.35 million, and Texas had 1.65 million, data from the Pew Research Center, a non-partisan think tank, show. That’s about six per cent of the total population of each state. The total for the U.S. is around 11 million.

Some immigrants say it’s just too risky now to get behind the wheel because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are targeting undocumented people identified through routine traffic stops or waiting for a bus.

A 60-year-old janitor from Mexico who’s lived in California without proper authorization since 1995 said he’d rather walk an hour to get to the doctor than drive or ride the bus. He goes to a clinic 16 kilometres away from home twice a month, he said. He asked not to be identified for fear of deportation.

A 34-year-old undocumented vineyard worker in California, who moved to the U.S. five years ago from Mexico, said that before Trump was elected, she and her husband would travel on the weekends. Now they are too afraid to leave home, even to go to the grocery store, she said. She also asked not to be identified for fear of deportation.

“Whether it’s driving to work and school or being picked up by ICE by the corner of the house, people are just scared to pick up and leave,” said Edwin CarmonaCruz, development director at La Raza Centro Legal, a San Francisco-based legal rights organization.