What will mass deportation of immigrants do to the economy?

Construction worker with an American Flag behind him and work helmets.

Oct. 18, 2024 1:37 PM PT

During a Univision town hall with Latino voters broadcasted Wednesday, Jorge Velázquez, a 64-year-old farmer from Santa Maria, Calif., asked Donald Trump the following question in Spanish:

“I’ve worked all my life with these hands. Hunched over for hours, picking strawberries and cutting broccoli. This hard work is realized in large part by undocumented people. If you deport these people, who will do that work and what price will we pay for food?”

Trump, who has promised to enact the “biggest domestic deportation campaign in American history” if elected president, offered a 3-minute ramble (you can watch the whole exchange here) that mentioned insane asylums, MS-13 and prison populations in other countries. He claimed that he was “the best thing that happened to farmers.”

What he did not do is actually answer the question, which is a real shame because it certainly was a good one. If elected president and if he follows through on his promise, what effects will that have on the U.S. economy, what impact will it have on the cost of food and who will replace the millions of workers in industries like agriculture and construction?

This isn’t to say that the only value of undocumented workers is their exploitable labor. Far from it. They are members of our communities and, in many cases, members of our own families. They are human beings worthy of dignity and respect.

But in an election where the majority of voters cite the economy as the most important issue to them, according to the Pew Research Center, and in an election in which immigrants (both undocumented and those here legally) are being blamed for many of our country’s woes—from false accusations of them driving up home prices to absurd claims that they’re eating pets — it’s worth examining the potential consequences of mass deportation.

In short, it would be economically devastating.

According to a report published earlier this month by American Immigration Council, a pro-migration advocacy group, mass deportation would shrink the country’s gross domestic product to levels not seen since the Great Recession— the study estimates that GDP loss would be about 4.2% to 6.8%, or roughly $1.1 trillion to $1.7 trillion.

The report also estimates that the cost of a one-time operation to deport an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants would be $315 billion. To deport 1 million people a year would cost $88 billion annually. Additionally, the U.S. government would annually lose out on the $22.6 billion undocumented immigrants pay into social security and the $5.7 billion they pay to Medicare.

Mass deportation would also wreak havoc on the U.S. food supply and increase the prices— undocumented workers account for more than half of all farm workers. According to a 2015 report by the National Milk Producers Federation, immigrant labor made up 51% of all dairy workers; dairy farms that employ these workers are responsible for 79% of the U.S. milk supply. If the dairy industry lost its immigrant workforce, the cost of a gallon of milk would double.

Construction would come to a halt. This is especially true in Texas, where undocumented labor has fueled the state’s construction boom.

“Since 2000, Texas’s population has grown by around 10 million, with many new arrivals chasing the ‘Texas Miracle’ — a fast-growing economy that’s the envy of other states. Construction workers lacking legal status have laid the foundations for this miracle,” writes my former colleague Jack Herrera in this extensively reported story for Texas Monthly that takes a deep dive into how dependent the state’s construction industry is on undocumented labor.

“Cutting off the supply of undocumented workers,” he writes, “would be like cutting off the supply of concrete and lumber.”

For all the anti-immigrant rhetoric, the reality is this country needs undocumented workers and will continue to do so for decades to come as more of the U.S. population ages out of the workforce. But will America’s appetite for cheap exploitable labor be outweighed by the dehumanizing contempt it has for the people who provide it?

We’ll find out soon enough.

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