Removing undocumented immigrants by the millions would harm the economy and cause major collateral damage.
In his upcoming second term as president, Donald Trump has promised to engage in the largest mass deportation operation in American history, removing millions of people from the country.
But as New Yorkers and anyone who lives among immigrants should understand well, the idea of mass deportations plays on several false stereotypes and misconceptions. As I show in my recent book with Carina Cione, “Immigration Realities,” immigrants come to the United States to work and raise healthy families; their crime rates are much lower than those of natives; they rarely bring drugs as they cross and they are less likely to consume them. All of those facts are contrary to the claims of Trump and his allies, who insist that undocumented immigrants consume resources, commit more crime than their native-born counterparts and drive up prices for the rest of us.
Undocumented people make up only around 3.3% of the U.S. population. If one relies on estimates from the Pew Research Center, there were around 11 million undocumented individuals in 2022 out of a population of 333.3 million people. People asking for asylum, on humanitarian parole, or holding Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in 2025 are probably around 2.7 million, another .8%. These are people who are often escaping war or political persecution in their countries of origin. The great majority want to stay out of trouble and settle in the United States until things get better in their place of origin, and as with all immigrants and exile groups, some will go back.
In a recent study, my coauthors and I found that immigrants who regularly send money home — including many undocumented workers and many in temporary statuses who are at risk of deportation — contributed 8% of the GDP in 2022. If half of them were deported — an operation that itself would cost an estimated $500 billion taxpayer dollars, based on an estimate of $88 billion per year per million deportations — there would be at least a 4% reduction in GDP the following year. That loss is greater than the year-on-year growth of the U.S. economy since the pandemic.
The timing could not be worse for mass deportation. The U.S.’s birth rates are lower than what is needed to keep population size steady.
And things get even more complicated: undocumented immigrants are essential workers, indeed, many died during the pandemic while keeping us fed and taken care of. Undocumented immigrants are part of professional work teams. Many have started businesses and hired U.S. citizens. They are part of mixed-status families married to U.S. citizens and parents to children born in the U.S., who are citizens according to the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Tom Homan, the “border czar” appointed by Trump, has said in the past that he would be fine with deporting whole families, including U.S. citizens. Besides the cruelty and broad brush of such measures, this would lead to the departure of an even larger part of the population, including people active in the labor force and children being educated in the U.S. who are familiar with American culture and could become future workers, artists, athletes and innovators.
The timing could not be worse for mass deportation. The U.S.’s birth rates are lower than what is needed to keep population size steady. The decrease in the number of children and people of prime working age means that, as a whole, the population is aging. Immigration is a way to slow this trend, but the Trump administration policies would also probably reduce informal, temporal and legal migration. Even a small shrinking of the number of people living in the U.S. means a contraction of the economy, potentially leading to fewer workers for businesses to grow and higher rates of inflation.
Nor is this just a city issue. If the Trump administration were successful in deporting most undocumented workers in rural areas, the prices of milk, poultry, beef, pork, fruits and vegetables would go up much more than they have following the pandemic. Many crops would go to waste, as is already happening in places where they cannot hire enough workers, including in groves in Florida, where draconian anti-undocumented immigrant measures have already been instituted.
Mass deportations without significant increases in guest worker programs would mean a greater scarcity of construction workers, contractors, day laborers and people to fix things around, cut the grass and do landscaping in houses, buildings, condos or golf clubs. Fewer people would be available to work at daycare centers, retirement homes, grocery stores and small and large businesses.
If the Trump administration were successful in deporting most undocumented workers in rural areas, the prices of milk, poultry, beef, pork, fruits and vegetables would go up much more than they have following the pandemic.
Trump and his appointees want to deport all undocumented people, close all pending asylum cases, shut the door to all new asylum seekers and refugees and decrease the number of work visas issued to people from the global south. If they were successful in doing all of this, Uber and taxis could become a luxury service, as would food delivery and eating out. Restaurants and fast-food businesses may have to close because of worker shortages.
The personnel, equipment, holding facilities and other resources needed for mass deportations would be expensive, increase the national debt and preclude taxpayer dollars from being invested in productive ways. Furthermore, building the security infrastructure needed to find and deport over 11 million people in a context where citizens tolerate these removals across the country would require the creation of a security state, the likes of which we have never experienced in the U.S. This would result in a weakening of democracy and freedom of speech. The hurt and long-term consequences of family separations due to immigration policies can create multi-generational trauma.
There is a lot to lose from mass deportations and little to win. Trump and some of his close allies say implicitly and explicitly that they want a whiter U.S. by embracing white nationalism, committing to fighting what Trump terms “anti-white feeling” and blaming immigration for white poverty. Nevertheless, most people of color in the United States are U.S. citizens without immediate undocumented family members. So the voter base and racial composition of the country would not change quickly into a whiter country even with mass deportations. The last election has also shown that immigrants and their descendants do not and will not always vote for Democrats.
We have already seen immigration lawyer groups, council members, mayors, governors, congresspeople, senators and other elected officials speaking about how important it is to defend undocumented migrants who are law-abiding members of local communities. Nonprofit groups, churches and sanctuary cities will offer support to people at risk of deportation. We can only hope that if the deportations of children, the elderly and families commence and are duly documented, it will generate a strong response from the center, the left, and among some Republican voters — ultimately increasing further public support for immigration and immigration reform that include amnesties. But for now, that’s the best we can hope for.