WASHINGTON – Former President Donald Trump’s proposed mass deportation of undocumented immigrants could cost $967.9 billion over more than a decade and devastate the labor market, according to a new report from the nonprofit advocacy organization American Immigration Council.
The report estimates that if the U.S. were to deport one million undocumented immigrants per year, it would cost $88 billion dollars annually. A mass deportation would also lead to a loss of 4.2 percent to 6.8 percent of annual U.S. GDP.
Trump’s Agenda 47 campaign platform promises sweeping immigration reforms, including a mass deportation of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. as of 2022, according to the Office of Homeland Security Statistics. If carried out, the plan would be the largest deportation program in U.S. history.
“When we think about the economy at a national level, we think about the critical role that undocumented immigrants play in the U.S. economy as workers, entrepreneurs, taxpayers and consumers,” said Nan Wu, research director at the American Immigration Council.
Undocumented immigrants make up 4.6% of the U.S.’s employed workforce, or 7.5 million people, according to the American Immigration Council. They make up sizable portions of the agriculture, construction and hospitality industries.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that undocumented immigrants are taking the jobs of U.S.-born workers, particularly Black and Latino Americans. But several economists find that this is not the case. Some studies analyzing past mass deportation programs in the U.S. have found they negatively impact the labor market.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Chloe East, associate professor of economics at the University of Colorado Denver, expects a potential Trump administration mass deportation program to look somewhat like the Bush- and Obama-era Secure Communities policy, which led to the deportation of over 450,000 immigrants between 2008 and 2014.
East studied the short-term labor market outcomes of the policy and found that it caused jobs and wages to decrease for U.S.-born workers. The study found that when half a million undocumented workers were taken out of the labor market, it resulted in 44,000 fewer jobs held by U.S.-born workers. East also found that hourly wages decreased for U.S.-born citizens by 0.6%.
Robert Lynch, professor of economics at Washington College, said there are a few main reasons why deportation does not open up jobs for U.S.-born workers and rather causes the economy to contract.
Lynch points to the loss of purchasing power from these 11 million undocumented immigrants, which the American Immigration Council estimates would result in a loss of $256.8 billion from the economy.
Research also finds that most U.S.-born workers are not willing to take jobs filled by undocumented immigrants, so mass deportation leaves an unfilled gap in the labor force, East said.
A mass deportation of all 1.5 million undocumented construction workers would leave a huge gap in the industry, one that U.S.-born workers are unlikely to fill, East said. These vacancies would reduce demand for complementary jobs that are more likely to be filled by U.S.-born workers such as construction site managers, she said.
“You can’t have one without the other,” Lynch said. For example, “the restaurant cannot function without the back staff or the front staff, but if you deport the back staff, the restaurant may have to shut down.”
Wu adds that companies may turn to automation if a large part of their labor force is deported.
“If industries automate their production in replace of the workers that they just lost, we’d be talking about a total loss of jobs for everyone in that industry,” Wu said.
Another study conducted by Moody’s Analytics for the Wall Street Journal examined Arizona’s economy after a series of anti-immigrant laws were passed in the state from 2007 to 2008. These laws prompted 40 percent of undocumented immigrants to leave Arizona. The departures alone caused a 2% drop in the state’s GDP every year from 2008 to 2015 and decreased total employment by 2.5%, the report found.
As of 2022, 79% of undocumented immigrants have been in the U.S. since before 2010, according to the Department of Homeland Security. These people are deeply entrenched in the economy, Lynch said.
“If you were in fact to do a mass deportation program, there’s going to be a lot of unforeseen consequences and chaos in the labor market,” Lynch said. “Removing eight million workers is going to cause a lot of disruption.”
