Mass Deportation Would Damage the U.S. Economy

The federal government would have to spend roughly $400 billion to $600 billion to address the 11.2 million undocumented immigrants and prevent future unlawful entry into the United States. In order to remove all undocumented immigrants, each immigrant would have to be apprehended, detained, legally processed, and transported to his or her home country. The United States would need to add more apprehension personnel and more beds in detention facilities. We would have to pay for continuous chartered bus trips and flights. We would also need to add a lot more immigration courts and judges and more federal attorneys to process them through our system.

The promise of deportation is an extremely expensive one in terms of the budget required and the economic fallout. It would also rend the social fabric of America as it would be necessary to do house and business searches to find those who should be deported.

The cost of carrying out mass deportations is staggering. About 11 million undocumented immigrants lived in the United States as of 2022 or 3.3 percent of the country’s overall population. An additional 2.3 million removable immigrants were released into the United States between January 2023 and April 2024 and would also be targeted in any mass deportation operation. In total, the cost of a one-time mass deportation operation aimed at both populations is at least $315 billion. This figure is a highly conservative estimate.

It does not take into account the long-term costs of a sustained mass deportation operation or the incalculable additional costs necessary to acquire the institutional capacity to remove over 13 million people in a short period, incalculable because there is simply no reality in which such a singular operation is possible. There would be no way to accomplish this mission without mass detention as an interim step. To put the scale of detaining over 13 million undocumented immigrants into context, the entire U.S. prison and jail population in 2022, comprising every person held in local, county, state, and federal prisons and jails, was 1.9 million people.

A one-time operation to deport these immigrants would cost at least $315 billion, broken down as follows:

• The government would have to spend $89.3 billion to conduct sufficient arrests.
• The government would have to spend $167.8 billion to detain immigrants en masse.
• The government would have to spend $34.1 billion on legal processing.
• The government would have to spend $24.1 billion on removals.

Deporting one million immigrants per year would incur an annual cost of $88 billion, with the majority of that cost going towards building detention camps. It would take over ten years, and the building of hundreds to thousands of new detention facilities, to arrest, detain, process, and remove all 13.3 million targeted immigrants—even assuming that 20 percent of that population would depart voluntarily during any multi-year mass deportation effort. The total cost over 10.6 years (assuming an annual inflation rate of 2.5 percent) would be $967.9 billion.

The annual costs would break down as follows:

• The government would have to spend an average of $7 billion per year to conduct one million arrests annually.
• The government would have to spend an average of $66 billion per year to detain one million immigrants annually, or surveil them on alternatives to detention programs while detention capacity ramps up to one million.
• The government would have to spend an average of $12.6 billion per year to carry out legal processing for an average of one million immigrants annually.
• The government would have to spend an average of $2.1 billion per year to remove one million immigrants annually.

To carry out over 13 million arrests in a short period of time would require somewhere between 220,000 and 409,000 new government employees and law enforcement officers, which would be nearly impossible given current hiring challenges across law enforcement agencies. Even carrying out one million at-large arrests per year would require ICE to hire over 30,000 new law enforcement agents and staff, instantly making it the largest law enforcement agency in the federal government.

The Labor Shortages

The labor shortages that result from mass deportations would raise costs for all Americans. With unemployment near a historic low, employers in sectors like agriculture and construction would produce less, resulting in shortages and higher prices. Economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimate that a deportation scenario of 1.3 million immigrants would raise prices by 1.5% by 2028 while deporting 8.3 million immigrants would raise prices by 9.1%. Additionally, mass deportations would reduce consumer spending, as undocumented workers are not just workers but also consumers. If demand for certain goods and services slows enough, demand for workers in those sectors may also slow, and some businesses may be forced to lay off American workers.

Depending on how many immigrants are deported, these mass deportations would:

• Reduce real gross domestic product (GDP) by as much as 7.4% by 2028.
• Reduce the supply of workers for key industries, including over 225,000 workers in agriculture and 1.5 million workers in construction.
• Push prices up to 9.1% higher by 2028, and Cost 44,000 U.S.-born workers their jobs for every half a million immigrants removed from the labor force.

On top of the billions of dollars it would cost to undertake the sweeping deportation efforts that President Trump has called for across the country, multiple analyses show that any mass deportation plan would cause massive declines in GDP and overall employment.

Estimates from the Peterson Institute for International Economics show that if 8.3 million undocumented immigrants are deported, GDP would be 7.4% lower and employment would be 7.0% lower by 2028. This 7.4% reduction in GDP over four years would likely mean that the U.S. economy would not grow at all during President Trump’s second term. Even if 1.3 million undocumented immigrants are deported, GDP would drop by 1.2%, and employment would fall by 1.1% by 2028.

The American Immigration Council has estimated that long-term deportation—deporting one million people each year until there is no undocumented population—could amount to a 4.2% to 6.8% loss in GDP (totaling $1.1 to $1.7 trillion in losses), with the effects felt most acutely in California, Florida, and Texas. To put this in context, the economy shrank by 4.3% during the Great Recession.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that this deportation plan would cut $25.7 billion in funds for Social Security and $1.8 billion from Medicare each year because these workers would no longer pay into these programs. These undocumented immigrants also pay $59.4 billion in Federal taxes and $37.3 billion in state and local taxes.

The massive costs associated with these deportation plans underscore just how vital immigrants are to the U.S. economy. Non-partisan analysis of recent immigration trends by the Hamilton Project shows that in 2023 immigrants contributed $48 billion to overall personal income and $46 billion to consumer spending. An analysis by former Council of Economic Advisers chief economist Ernie Tedeschi suggests that immigration is responsible for at least a fifth of the 8.2% growth in real GDP since the end of 2019.

Immigrants tend to be younger, and with their high employment rates, they pay taxes into Social Security and Medicare, with most not receiving benefits until many years in the future, if they are eligible at all. One study found that each foreign-born person pays, on average, $1,300 more each year and $237,000 more over their lifetime in taxes than they receive in federal, state, and local government benefits. Another showed that between 2012 and 2018, immigrants contributed $166 more per capita, on average, to the Medicare Trust Fund each year than what was spent on their behalf. Conversely, Medicare paid more on U.S.-born Americans than they contributed, with an average cost of $51 per capita.

Although immigrants use fewer health care services than U.S.-born citizens, some worry that immigrants are a burden to the US economy, particularly the health care system. Previous studies have found that immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants, contribute more to the Medicare program (primarily through payroll taxes) than Medicare pays for their health care, thereby prolonging the life of the Medicare Trust Fund. Similarly, private health insurance premiums paid by immigrants (and by employers on their behalf) exceed the amounts private insurance plans pay for their care (ie, immigrants with private insurance effectively subsidize US-born private insurance enrollees). Immigration can help preserve Social Security, while reforms to immigration policy could help extend Medicare solvency.

The Social Toll: Families Torn Apart, Communities Fractured

Mass deportation rips families apart, often separating parents from their children. The United States is home to an estimated 16.7 million people living in mixed-status families, meaning that at least one member lacks legal immigration status while others, including children, are U.S. citizens. According to a study by the Migration Policy Institute, about 5 million U.S.-born children have at least one undocumented parent.

When parents are deported, children face severe emotional and economic consequences. Research by the Urban Institute found that children with deported parents experience higher levels of anxiety, depression, and PTSD, with many struggling academically. The National Bureau of Economic Research also found that school attendance among Latino children declines significantly following high-profile immigration raids due to fear and instability.

Beyond families, entire communities suffer. A 2017 study from the American Psychological Association found that deportation fears reduce engagement with police, healthcare providers, and schools, eroding trust in public institutions and weakening community safety. When immigrants fear reporting crimes, it becomes harder for law enforcement to do their jobs, leading to increased crime in affected neighborhoods.

Policy Solutions

Given the need for immigrant workers and their valuable fiscal and economic contributions to the nation, lawmakers and a new administration should enact reforms to the immigration system which maximize the ability of immigrants to work and help the US economy.

Path to citizenship. Although opponents of immigration reform have called providing the undocumented population a “path to citizenship” an “amnesty,” or “giveaway,” such a policy would provide economic and fiscal benefits to the nation by allowing undocumented workers to fully develop their talents and contribute more to the economy. According to economists, legalizing the undocumented population would contribute $1.2 trillion to the US economy over ten years and $184 billion per year in federal, state and local taxes.

An increase in legal avenues in the US immigration system. In the current US immigration system, the number of legal avenues for workers is limited and does not meet the demands of today’s labor market, especially in the need for low-skilled workers. The creation of legal avenues would 1) establish more certainty in the labor market, as employers could plan and invest in their businesses with more confidence; 2) ensure that the maximum amount of taxes are collected from immigrants; and 3) reduce the flow of undocumented persons seeking to work in the United States, which is in the best interests of the migrant and the nation.

Oppose mass deportation plans. President Donald Trump has called for the mass deportation of the undocumented population, a plan which could have devastating moral, fiscal, and economic consequences for the nation. According to estimates, the plan could cost over $500 billion to implement and would sacrifice billions in tax revenue per year. It also would lead to labor shortages and reduce the GDP by $5.1 trillion over the next ten years.

Conclusion

Immigrants contribute to many social programs with their taxes despite many being ineligible to receive most government benefits. In 2022, immigrants had a spending power of $1.6 trillion, and they collectively paid $579 billion in local, state, and federal taxes.

The effects of mass deportations could be greater if additional documented immigrants or U.S. citizen family members also leave the country. People in mixed-status families who are either U.S.-born children or green card holders may be caught up in deportation sweeps or leave themselves if undocumented members of their family are deported.

The deportation of substantial numbers of unauthorized people, most of whom work, would, self-evidently, have substantial negative consequences for those deported and their families. Research shows that mass deportation would also negatively impact the American economy and people in a number of ways:

• The U.S. economy would noticeably contract as it lost the contributions of unauthorized immigrants.
• Jobs for American workers would decline. Instead of native-born Americans having new work opportunities opened up for them and replacing deported unauthorized workers, research shows that overall employment would fall for the native-born.
• Instead of more competition for workers driving up wages, most American’s wages would face downward pressure as jobs were lost and the economy shrinks.
• Tax revenues would decline.
• The government would spend many billions of dollars capturing, detaining, processing, and deporting people.
  As domestic production of goods and services dropped, inflation would increase.

A More Humane Path Forward

The challenges of immigration cannot be solved through mass deportation. Instead, comprehensive immigration reform that balances border security with pathways to legal status offers a more effective and humane approach. Studies show that providing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants would boost the U.S. economy by $1.5 trillion over 10 years, according to the Center for American Progress.

Deportation is not just a policy decision; it is a human issue. Behind every statistic is a story, a family, a community that will feel the weight of that decision for generations. As a nation built on immigration, the United States must choose a path that reflects its values of compassion, opportunity, and justice.