By: Anna Dominguez
Published on: April 14, 2025
From the first day of Trump’s second term, Americans have witnessed the swift implementation of aggressive immigration policies, including a surge in United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) raids and a renewed pledge to mass deportation.[1] While both Democrats and Republicans have expressed concerns about the social and political implications of these actions, the economic consequences of mass deportation remain largely overlooked.[2]
In 2024, the American Immigration Council estimated that a mass deportation of approximately eleven million undocumented people in the United States would cost at least $315 billion.[3] This highly conservative estimation accounts for expenses related to arrests, detention, legal processing, and removals.[4] It further concluded that the deportation of one million immigrants per year would cost $88 billion per year and take over ten years with a total cost of about $967.9 billion.[5] The same study found that mass deportations could significantly impact the economy, reducing the annual gross domestic product (“GDP”) by 4.2% to 6.8%, equating to a loss of $1.1 trillion to $1.7 trillion per year.[6]
President Trump also began sending noncitizens to a detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba and will reportedly also ask Congress to fund an expansion of the detention facility.[7] Prior to Trump’s second term, the Migrant Operations Center at Guantanamo Bay housed Cuban and Haitian migrants interdicted at sea before entering the United States.[8] Transporting migrants from the United States would likely require increased government spending on security personnel, transportation, and infrastructure, as well as medical and legal services.[9] This remote location would also complicate legal proceedings, which could potentially extend detention periods and further drive up costs.[10] Therefore, the transfer of migrants from the United States to Guantanamo Bay raises a variety of distinct concerns, not only due to the significant economic costs but also because it may undermine migrants’ ability to seek asylum and exercise their due process rights.[11]
In 2024, the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell stated that the United States economy has benefited from immigration over time.[12] Powell noted that a major reason for the balancing of the labor market in 2023 after the COVID-19 pandemic was the return of immigration to typical levels.[13] Mass deportations will reduce the supply of workers in key industries, including up to 225,000 workers in agriculture and 1.5 million workers in construction, which could push prices up to 9.1% higher by 2028.[14] Such economic disruptions would strain consumers and place additional pressures on businesses.
Migrants not only help expand the labor supply but also pay nearly $580 billion a year in taxes, helping to cushion the American economy.[15] In 2022, undocumented migrant households paid $46.8 billion in federal taxes and $29.3 billion in state and local taxes.[16] This population also contributed about $5.7 billion to Medicare, a federal healthcare program that generally excludes undocumented migrants from its benefits.[17] These contributions highlight the significant economic role that migrants play, even as many remain excluded from the very programs that they help fund.[18]
Given these substantial contributions, the mass deportation of undocumented migrants would not only shrink the labor force but also eliminate a significant source of tax revenue, exacerbating economic strain.[19] Additionally, the process of deportation is costly, time-consuming, and will likely demand additional investment from the federal government to fulfill Trump’s goals.[20]
Ultimately, the economic consequences of mass deportation cannot be ignored. Removing millions of undocumented migrants would impose immense financial burdens on the government, weaken the labor market, strain consumers, all while stripping the economy of significant tax contributions. As policymakers debate immigration policy, they must weigh not only the social and political implications but also the profound economic costs of such drastic measures.
[1] Bill Barrow, Everything Trump Did in the First Executive Orders and Actions of His Presidency, AP News (Jan. 22, 2025, 8:28 PM), https://apnews.com/article/what-has-trump-done-trump-executive-orders-f061fbe7f08c08d81509a6af20ef8fc0 [hereinafter Everything Trump Did in the First Executive Orders].
[2] Joint Economic Committee Democrats, Mass Deportations Would Deliver a Catastrophic Blow to the U.S. Economy, Joint Econ. Comm. (Dec. 11, 2024), https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/2024/12/mass-deportations-would-deliver-a-catastrophic-blow-to-the-u-s-economy.
[3] See Am. Immigr. Council, Mass Deportation: Devastating Costs to America, Its Budget and Economy (2024) (noting that the estimated cost does not take into account the long-term costs of a sustained mass deportation operation or the additional costs necessary to acquire the institutional capacity to remove millions of people in a short period of time).
[4] Id.
[5] Id.
[6] See id. (comparing this potential GDP loss to the Great Recession between 2007 and 2009 where the United States GDP shrank by 4.3%).
[7] Bernd Debussman Jr. & Will Grant, Trump Says US Will Send Some Migrants to Guantanamo Bay, BBC News (Jan. 29, 2025), https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yelgxk3rlo.
[8] Chris Opila, Sending Migrants to Guantanamo Bay Is a Costly, Abusive Shift in Immigration Detention, Immigr. Impact (Feb. 7, 2025), https://immigrationimpact.com/2025/02/07/sending-migrants-guantanamo-bay-costly-abusive-detention/.
[9] Id.
[10] See id. (noting that the complex legal logistics is likely a feature, not a bug, of this policy).
[11] Id.
[12] Scott Pelley, Jerome Powell: Full 2024 60 Minutes Interview Transcript, CBS News (Feb. 4, 2024, 7:00 PM) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/full-transcript-fed-chair-jerome-powell-60-minutes-interview-economy/.
[13] Id.
[14] Joint Economic Committee, supra note 2.
[15] Barrow, supra note 1.
[16] Am. Immigr. Council, supra note 3.
[17] Id.
[18] See id. (highlighting that undocumented immigrants cannot benefit from many of the programs that they pay into, including Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance).
[19] See id. (emphasizing the billions paid to federal, state, and local governments by undocumented people).
[20] Opila, supra note 8.