Labor expert: Trump’s Immigration Plan Would ‘Wreak Havoc’ on Workforce, Economy

Immigration and the economy are consistently the top issues for potential voters in this year's presidential election, but the two are intertwined more than you might think.

Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump both have plans for the border crisis:

• Harris wants to increase the number of agents at the border; apprehend, remove and bar unlawful border crossers from reentering for five years; pursuing criminal charges for repeat offenders; invest in more detection technology to reduce the volume of fentanyl smuggled in. She said during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona on Sept. 27 that she would embrace bipartisan solutions to reduce illegal crossings “because I know, transnational gangs coming across the border, trafficking in guns, drugs and human beings could care less who somebody voted for in the last election.” Harris has repeatedly said that Trump used his influence over Republicans in Congress to kill a bipartisan border bill introduced earlier this year that would have addressed the border situation. 

• Trump has pledged to secure the border by completing the border wall; moving thousands of troops and federal law enforcement to the border; instructing the Navy to search ships for fentanyl. He also pledged to stop federal funding for sanctuary cities; strengthen the power of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and “use extreme vetting” of immigrants. 

Trump has made immigration a cornerstone issue throughout this and previous campaigns, using a steady stream of extreme rhetoric to blame unauthorized immigration for a range of national ills from violent crime to failing schools — even making the false claim that immigrants are predisposed to violence and commit murder due to “bad genes.” His policy proposals extend beyond the border.

In this campaign, he has emphasized a promise to round up, detain and deport millions of undocumented immigrants in a plan he calls “Operation Aurora.” To carry out his plans, he says he would increase the number of agents by 10,000, while also using the National Guard and police.

At rallies and in the Republican National Committee platform, Trump has claimed he can deport migrants under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which says that during wartime with a foreign nation or government, men ages 14 and up who are not naturalized citizens may be “apprehended, restrained, secured and removed, as alien enemies” under the directive of the president.

He has also promised to punish any migrant that returns to the U.S. after deportation. On Oct. 13, at a rally in Coachella, Calif. Trump told supporters, “And if they come back into our country after… We are going to throw them out so far you wouldn’t believe it. But if they come back into our country, it’s an automatic 10 years in jail with no possibility of parole, 10 years. And if that doesn’t work, it’ll be 20 years. And if that doesn’t work, I guess it’s going to be the death penalty, right? Death penalty.”

Beyond the humanitarian and moral arguments against rounding people up en masse for detention and deportation, there are logistical, societal and economic factors to consider. If Trump were to be elected and able to enact his plans to remove millions of people, it could have disastrous effects on the economy.

What mass deportation could do to the U.S. economy

Since fiscal year 2021, more than 8.6 million unauthorized immigrants have been apprehended crossing the southern border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. But those encounters have declined significantly in the latter half of the 2024 fiscal year, compared to previous years.

“The surge in immigration across the southern border since the pandemic reopening has presented many challenges to communities across the nation, but the benefit has been to significantly increase labor supply and help ease wage and price pressures,” according to an August report analyzing the effects of a Trump or Harris win by Moody’s Analytics, the research arm of the global credit rate. “This in turn has forestalled even more aggressive interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve and thus a possible recession.”

The Moody’s report projects that if Trump’s immigration plans are enacted it would result in a tighter job market and put upward pressure on wages and prices.

Here are some of the projected economic impacts of mass deportations, according to the American Immigration Council:

• Reduced growth: A reduction in U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) by 4.2%-6.8% (during the Great Recession, GDP decreased by 4.3%).

• Reduced tax revenue: In 2022, households consisting of undocumented immigrants paid $46.8 billion in federal taxes and $29.3 billion in state and local taxes.

• Reduced contributions to Social Security and Medicare: In 2022, undocumented immigrants contributed $22.6 billion to Social Security and $5.7 billion to Medicare. They are not eligible to receive benefits under those programs.

Mass deportation would be a costly proposition in more ways than one. There were roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. as of 2022 — about 3.3% of the total population, according to the American Immigration Council (AIC) . About 2.3 million legal immigrants could also be targeted in mass deportation, the council estimates. An operation to remove millions of immigrants from the population would be costly when you take into consideration the efforts to conduct arrests; detention center creation and operation; legal processing; and removals. The AIC estimates a one-time cost would be at least $315 billion. If deportations happened slower — about 1 million per year — it would cost $88 billion annually. Over a period of over 10 years, mass deportations would cost $967.9 billion, adjusted for inflation.

But the most direct and immediate impact of mass deportation would be in the labor market, with immigrant-dominant job sectors like construction, agriculture, hospitality and retail bearing the brunt. And 1 million undocumented immigrant entrepreneurs would be lost, as well; in 2022, these business owners generated $27.1 billion in total income, according to the AIC.

To learn more about what Trump’s plans would do to the U.S. workforce, NerdWallet spoke with Kent Wong, the project director for UCLA Labor Center’s Labor and Community Partnerships. He was the UCLA Labor Center director for more than 30 years and he continues to teach courses in labor studies and Asian American studies.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

NerdWallet: Let's say Trump is elected president. He clears all of the potential legal hurdles that are involved with his immigration plans, and he's able to fully enact mass deportations. What's the broad view of the impact on the labor market?

Kent Wong: If Donald Trump is successful in his claims to advance a mass deportation agenda, it would have a devastating impact on the U.S. economy and would throw havoc into critical parts of the workforce. Immigrant workers are highly concentrated in the agricultural sector, in the domestic sector. They care for children. They care for the elderly. They plant and pick the fruits and vegetables that we consume every day of our lives. And if, in fact, he would be involved in a mass deportation initiative, it would wreak havoc on the economy, wreak havoc on critical parts of the workforce.

NerdWallet: You mentioned caregiving. You mentioned agriculture. What industries would bear the greatest blows from mass deportations? Unauthorized immigrants tend to work different jobs than the majority of people born in the U.S. or legal immigrants, and those jobs are often riskier and lower paying. Is that accurate?

Kent Wong: That is accurate. Because of employer sanctions, undocumented immigrants are ineligible for government jobs. So those would have no impact. And they are quite vulnerable, especially in sectors of the economy that use and abuse contract labor. And that includes agriculture. That includes manufacturing, especially in garment, in food processing and in meatpacking. It includes construction. It includes the service sector, restaurants. The retail industries are heavily, heavily reliant on the immigrant workforce.

NerdWallet: Let’s look at agriculture and fishing and everything else involved in food production. How could Trump’s deportation plans impact prices for food and other related goods? Could there be shortages?

Kent Wong: It could create shortages. It could do great damage to the seasonal agricultural industry because the nature of the agriculture industry is that there's a lot of migrant labor that will rotate according to the seasons, and according to which fruits and vegetables require planting and harvesting. It could wipe out large parts of the agricultural economy.

NerdWallet: How about construction? There is a housing crisis in the U.S. Addressing shortages requires new housing and new construction.

Kent Wong: Yeah, there's tremendous need for construction for the building of more homes. Even during disaster relief efforts, we've seen large numbers of immigrant workers who have been brought in because of labor shortages. A lot of that very challenging, difficult effort to rebuild in the aftermath of hurricanes and tornadoes has been done by immigrant labor. So even with what we are experiencing now with regard to the massive devastation in the southeastern United States, we see tremendous need for migrant workers who have historically been recruited to assist with those efforts.

NerdWallet: You mentioned caregiving earlier and there are already labor shortages in that area. One would assume that Trump’s plans would exacerbate that?

Kent Wong: Yes. We have large numbers of immigrant workers who care for children and care for the elderly. And you have a large part of the workforce that is reliant on those workers to get to work themselves. If they don't have support for their needs at home, caring for their infants, toddlers, caring for their children after school, caring for their elderly parents and grandparents, then they can't get to work themselves. So it has a ripple effect with regard to the impact of immigrant workers who are critical for other people getting to work.

NerdWallet: During the pandemic, we saw what worker shortages in service, leisure and hospitality did to that industry: prices went up, service was stymied, some businesses didn't last. But that was during a national emergency and it was, ultimately, temporary. It was not due to systematic deportations. So I'm assuming that worker shortages in that sector would be much more significant and have a bigger impact under Trump’s plans?

Kent Wong: Well, that is the irony, because during the pandemic it was many immigrant workers who were at the forefront of the recovery effort, providing critically needed services. They were the ones still working in the fields. They were the ones still planting and picking the fruits and vegetables. They're the ones that were still working in the child care centers, still assisting with seniors. And so we celebrated them as essential workers during the pandemic. Large numbers of immigrant workers were celebrated as our essential workers. And yet they are now being viciously attacked by the former president who is spreading blatant falsehoods, which lead to dangerous conditions for immigrants.

When JD Vance and Donald Trump wrongfully claim that Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating people's pets, it causes tremendous fear within Haitian immigrant communities and other immigrant communities who are now being targeted and ostracized by their neighbors. So there's a lot of risk that is facing immigrant workers due to the very toxic language and the very hateful messaging that is ramping up as the Election Day draws closer.

NerdWallet: Are there any particular states that might see the greatest impacts from mass deportations?

Kent Wong: What we see is that immigrants are found throughout the country. And they are found in critical industries throughout the country, including agriculture, including construction, including domestic work, including meatpacking, including food processing and including the service sector and the retail sector. In cities and towns all over the country, we have seen large numbers of immigrant workers who are a vital part of the economy. And if those workers are being targeted or they're being picked up or they're being deported, it's going to have a ripple effect that will cripple many parts of the economy.

NerdWallet: I would imagine some people may leave on their own out of fear rather than face deportation.

Kent Wong: It also creates havoc and fear within immigrant communities, right? And so you have a situation where parents have to make this horrendous decision on whether they are going to take their children back to their native country. Their children who are U.S. citizens, who are in school, who are striving for the American dream. Are they going to remove them and bring them back to a more dangerous and a more economically-disadvantaged place? Or are they going to have friends or relatives raise them? These are the horrendous decisions that immigrant families have been faced with. During the Trump administration, there was a brutal policy of separation of families where parents were being taken from their children and children were being held in cages. So if that is the policy that Donald Trump wants to enact and ramp up, that's going to cause untold suffering within immigrant communities and trauma within immigrant children and with their families.

NerdWallet: As you mentioned, there was an increase in deportations during the Trump administration. There's been nearly the same amount during the Biden administration. But the amount of people who have been deported during both administrations is obviously nowhere near the scale that Trump proposes. Have deportations in recent years already made a significant impact on the labor force?

Kent Wong: Absolutely. When there have been spikes in workplace raids, it has had a very chilling impact within that industry. And when there is even a threat of enhanced raids, there have been labor shortages, especially in agricultural regions that are crying out for labor, for people who are needed to plant and pick their fruits and vegetables. So we see that even the threat of enhanced raids and the threat of deportations has ripple effects in other parts of the society.

NerdWallet: How would mass deportation affect those who remain in the U.S.?

Kent Wong: The reality is that of the 12 to 13 million undocumented immigrants, many live in mixed-status families. So many have children who are U.S. citizens. Many have relatives who are permanent residents. Many are married to U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Under the Biden-Harris administration, there was an attempt to regularize the spouses of U.S. citizens who are contributing to our society, who are raising their families and who are very unsafe because of the threats of enhanced deportations. So not only are we dealing with 13 million undocumented immigrants, we're also dealing with tens of millions of more who are impacted because of these mixed status families.

NerdWallet: Are there any other costs that we haven't talked about to mass deportations, whether economic or societal?

Kent Wong: You are removing large numbers of people, you are removing their labor power, you are removing their tax base, you are removing the ways that they are contributing to our society. And long term, you have no plan for who is going to fill those jobs. There is no plan for who is going to plant and pick fruits and vegetables. There is no large-scale campaign and there is no history of U.S. citizens willing to work these dangerous, arduous jobs in the hot sun. So this has been work that has historically been done by immigrants, and there is no plan whatsoever to fill that void that would be caused if those immigrant workers are deported.

We're talking about a human cost here. We're talking about the trauma that children will be facing into the future that has multiple damaging effects in the fabric within our society. And so, you know, these are very dangerous propositions that are being advanced by Trump and Vance. And it is very hateful and it is very unfortunate.