America’s Irreplaceable Immigrants

Robert Hunziker

 October 25, 2024
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Image by Tim Mossholder.

Every day when breakfast is served, Americans come face to face with the impact of immigrant workers without whom breakfast items would be too expensive for everyday consumption and/or if short on time, the nearest drive-through fast-food establishment, cars lined up for blocks, would charge an arm and a leg for a simple egg, cheese, and sausage sandwich. Without immigrant workers, costs will skyrocket beyond the reach of many Americans. And thankfully, undocumented immigrants are safer for US citizens than their own neighbors.

“A NIJ-funded study examining data from the Texas Department of Public Safety estimated the rate at which undocumented immigrants are arrested for committing crimes. The study found that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half (1/2) the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter (1/4th) the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.” (Source: Undocumented Immigrant Offending Rate Lower Than U.S.-Born Citizen Rate, National Institute of Justice, September 12, 2024)

“Substantial research has assessed the relationship between immigration and crime. Numerous studies show that immigration is not linked to higher levels of crime, but rather the opposite.” (Debunking the Myth of the ‘Migrant Crime Wave,’ Brennan Center for Justice, May 29, 2024)

In that regard, there’s been some chatter initiated by Texas Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales about 13,000 immigrants convicted of homicide. “A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said the data sent to Gonzales is being misinterpreted, and goes back four decades, long before the Biden administration.” (Source: More Than 13,000 Immigrants Convicted of Homicide Are Living Outside Immigration Detention in the U.S. ICE Says, NBC News, Sept. 28, 2024)

Immigrant laborers get their hands dirty when nobody else will. They are absolutely essential to the food supply chain, e.g., according to the Migration Policy Institute they are 30% of crop production workers across the country. In some instances, their numbers dictate survival of a basic food industry.

Some food production enterprises will cease to function without immigrant workers, e.g., 64% if Nebraska’s meat processing workers are immigrants. No immigrants, no steaks.

“Foreign workers make up about 68% of the workforce on American hog farms. Immigration is a key part of pork production, and many producers rely on foreign labor because it’s difficult to find a local workforce.” (Source: Immigration in the Swine Industry: Hiring Foreign -Born Labor, Pork Information Gateway). Moreover, immigrants make up 40% of the overall meatpacking workforce. No immigrants, no pork.

California supplies 33% of America’s vegetables and 75% of America’s fruit and nuts via a workforce dominated 65% by immigrants. They are at the core of the food supply chain to America. Additionally, California is America’s 4^th largest beef producer, and the state is America’s dairy leader. Immigrants do 2/3^rd of California’s agricultural work, supplying America’s all-important food chain. Without immigrants, breakfast costs will skyrocket beyond the reach of everyday Americans. Food inflation will eat America alive.

Iowa is one of America’s top pork and corn producers. A recent article in Bleeding Heartland, an independent website about Iowa politics, entitled Anti-Immigration Plans Could Have Unintended Consequences for Iowa AG d/d August 29, 2024: A major cattle producer in Sioux County claims: “If all of Sioux County’s immigrant labor left tomorrow, we’d have a huge problem. … We don’t have the people to replace them.” Moreover, according to the article: “It is not simply a matter of replacing immigrant labor with workers born in the United States. It is difficult finding people who want to do the backbreaking work of mucking out manure, hauling bedding for the animals, and moving thousands of pounds of feed for them every day.” No immigrants, no beef.

Bleeding Heartland’s article followed on the heels of a reversal of mean-spirited, lowbrow legislation: “In a victory for immigrant communities and families, on June 17 a federal district court in Iowa issued a preliminary injunction to block SF 2340, one of the worst, most far-reaching immigration laws ever passed in the state of Iowa.” According to Emma Winger, deputy legal director, American Immigration Council: “Sadly, we are still seeing copycat laws and proposed measures that would cause irreparable harm for immigrant families, including in Arizona, Texas, and Oklahoma. These types of laws create absolute chaos and human suffering and have no place in our legal system.” (Source: Iowa Blocks Hateful Anti-Immigrant Law, American Immigration Council, June 17, 2024)

And beyond the basic necessities of food supply, industry increasingly relies upon migrant workers. For example, in Ohio: Unions, Businesses Eye Migrants to Fill Labor Gaps in Ohio Reuters, May 2, 2024: “Help accessing immigrant communities to find workers to hire has been among the top three requests the Columbus Chamber of Commerce has fielded from local businesses in recent years, said Kelly Fuller, the chamber’s vice president of talent and workforce development.”

In the U.S., the expansion of the labor force via immigrants has kept the economy growing and consumer spending up without driving inflation even higher. According to Brookings Institution economist Tara Watson: “Immigration is bolstering a U. S. workforce that would otherwise be set to decline as the baby boomer generation retires. And especially in some fields, we have long-run structural needs that Americans are just not going to fill,’ Watson said, pointing to a lack of home health aides and other direct care workers,” Ibid.

In Charleroi, Pennsylvania David Barbe of Fourth Street Foods claims: “We operate 26 production lines for sandwiches, dinner, and breakfast bowls.” Out of 1,000 employees, 700 are immigrants on the assembly line. “The hours are long and monotonous, and Barbe says he gets almost no local applicants.” (Source: Charleroi, Pennsylvania, Business Owner Says Immigrant Population Works Jobs Americans Do Not Want, CBS News, September 18, 2024)

Pennsylvania thrives on newfound immigrants: “It is hard to overstate the importance of entrepreneurship since new businesses are the main driver of job growth in the United States. Immigrants play a particularly important role in this—founding businesses at far higher rates than the U.S. population overall. Today, millions of American workers are employed at immigrant-founded and immigrant-owned companies.” Pennsylvania claims 70,200 immigrant entrepreneurs paying $13 billion in taxes with $4.4 billion paid to social security and 650,200 total immigrant workers in the labor force. (Source: Immigrants in Pennsylvania, American Immigration Council)

Immigrants may be a political football that is easy to kick around but ironically, America’s biggest risk of becoming a third world country is loss of immigrant labor, resulting in grocery store shelves become increasingly empty, restaurants using paper plates/plastic forks to replace migrant help, and local farmer’s markets experiencing vicious, sometimes deadly, street fights by local citizens over scarce precious food items.

America’s Economic Growth Depends Upon Immigrants

“Immigrant workers are responsible for 88% of labor force growth in America since 2019.” (Source: Immigrants Will Be America’s Only Source Of Labor Force Growth, Forbes, October 16, 2024).

Labor force growth is crucial to economic growth, raising living standards for all citizens. According to the Dallas Fed: “While technological advances and incentives for investment will contribute to productivity growth, immigration will be vital to propping up labor force growth… The United States would have experienced no labor force growth during the past five years without immigrants and their children. Between 2018 and 2024, the number of workers with U.S. parents declined by 1.3 million, while the number of immigrants and children of immigrants in the U.S. labor force grew by 5.4 million,” Ibid.

America’s colleges and universities hold a special status in the eyes of the world: “Immigrant-origin students are the fastest growing group of students in higher education, driving over 90 percent of the domestic enrollment growth at U.S. colleges and universities from 2000 to 2022.” (Source: Immigrant-Origin Students in U.S. Higher Education – September 2024, Higher Ed Immigration Portal, Oct. 1, 2024)

Immigrants have never been more important to America’s growth and future. Immigrant labor does the backbreaking work that regular Americans refuse, the backbone of America’s food chain and industrial assembly lines. They do hard work in a quiet reserved manner. They are irreplaceable and the single most crucial factor to America’s future economic growth, which would stagnate without their resourcefulness and dedication to hard work.

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Trump vows to deport millions. Builders say it would drain their crews and drive up home costs.

Jing Feng and Nicole Acevedo
Sat, October 19, 2024

Tampa-area home builder Brent Taylor says immigrant labor is essential to residential construction, and mass deportations of undocumented people would hurt the industry.


Both presidential candidates promise to build more homes. One promises to deport hundreds of thousands of people who build them.

Former President Donald Trump’s pledge to “launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” would hamstring construction firms already facing labor shortages and push record home prices higher, say industry leaders, contractors and economists.

“It would be detrimental to the construction industry and our labor supply and exacerbate our housing affordability problems,” said Jim Tobin, CEO of the National Association of Home Builders. The trade group considers foreign-born workers, regardless of legal status, “a vital and flexible source of labor” to builders, estimating they fill 30% of trade jobs like carpentry, plastering, masonry and electrical roles.


Nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants were living in the U.S. as of 2022, the latest federal data shows, down from an 11.8 million peak in 2007. The construction sector employs an estimated 1.5 million undocumented workers, or 13% of its total workforce — a larger share than any other, according to data the Pew Research Center provided to NBC News. Industry experts say their rates are higher in Sun Belt states like Florida and Texas, and more pronounced in residential than in commercial construction.

For Brent Taylor, home building has been “a very, very difficult industry the past few years, and it seems to only be getting worse.” His five-person, Tampa-based business hires subcontractors to perform all the labor, and if those firms’ employees “show up on my jobsite because they work for that company, I don’t know if they’re legal or not,” he said.

The labor pool is tight already, with the U.S. construction industry still looking to fill 370,000 open positions, according to federal data. If work crews dwindle further, “now I can only do 10 jobs a year instead of 20,” Taylor said. “Either I make half as much money or I up my prices. And who ultimately pays for that? The homeowner.”

Workers at one of Brent Taylor’s construction sites removed debris Friday from a bathroom that recently sustained hurricane damage in Indian Rocks Beach, Fla.
Rhetoric or reality?

Trump hasn’t detailed how his proposed “whole of government” effort to remove up to 20 million people — far more than the undocumented population — would work, but he has made it central to his housing pitch. The Republican nominee claims mass deportations would free up homes for U.S. citizens and lower prices, though few economists agree. The idea has also drawn skepticism on logistical grounds, with some analysts saying its costs would be “astronomical.”

Doubts also run high among homebuilders that Trump would deliver on his promise.

“They don’t think it’s going to happen,” Stan Marek, CEO of the Marek Family of Companies, a Texas-based specialty subcontracting firm, said of industry colleagues. “You’d lose so many people that you couldn’t put a crew together to frame a house.”

Bryan Dunn, an-Arizona based senior vice president at Big-D Construction, a major Southwest firm, called “the idea that they could actually move that many people” out of the country “almost laughable.” The proposal has left those in the industry “trying to figure out how much is political fearmongering,” he said.

But while Trump has a history of floating outlandish ideas without seriously pursuing them — like buying Greenland — he has embraced other once-radical policies that reset the terms of political debate despite fierce criticism and litigation. That is especially true with immigration, where his administration diverted Pentagon money to build a border wall, banned travel from several Muslim-majority countries and separated migrant children from their parents.

Trump has emphasized his deportation pitch on the stump, at times deploying racist rhetoric like claiming thousands of immigrants are committing murders because “it’s in their genes.” This month he accused immigrant gangs of having “invaded and conquered” cities like Aurora, Colorado, which local authorities deny, saying they need federal assistance but want no part in mass deportations. Still, recent polling has found broad support for removing people who came to the U.S. illegally.

“President Trump’s mass deportation of illegal immigrants will not only make our communities safer but will save Americans from footing the bill for years to come,” Taylor Rogers, a Republican National Committee spokesperson for the campaign, said in a statement, referring to undocumented people’s use of taxpayer-funded social services and other federal programs.

Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that the former president’s remarks about genetics were “clearly referring to murderers, not migrants.”

Tobin said the NAHB has real concerns about the deportation proposal but is engaging with both campaigns. It has called on policymakers to “let builders build” by easing zoning and other regulatory hurdles and improving developers’ access to financing.

“The rhetoric on immigration, it’s at 11,” Tobin said. “We have to have a serious conversation in this country about immigration policy and reform, and we can no longer delay it.”

Marek, who has long advocated for more ways for undocumented people to work legally in construction, said reforms are decades overdue. As an employer, “I do everything I can to make sure everybody’s legal,” he said, even as the industry’s hunger for low-cost labor has created a shadow economy that he says often exploits the undocumented workers it depends upon.

“We need them. They’re building our houses — have been for 30 years,” he said. “Losing the workers would devastate our companies, our industry and our economy.”
‘The math is just not there’

There is evidence that foreign-born construction workers help keep the housing market in check. An analysis released in December 2022 by the George W. Bush Institute and Southern Methodist University found U.S. metro areas with the fastest-growing immigrant populations had the lowest building costs.

“Immigrant construction workers in Sun Belt metros like Raleigh, Nashville, Houston, and San Antonio have helped these cities sustain their housing cost advantage over coastal cities despite rapid growth in housing demand,” the authors wrote.


Construction laborers work on a job site in the Tampa-area, Fla., on Friday.

But builders need many more workers as it is. “The math is just not there” to sustain a blow from mass deportations, said Ron Hetrick, a senior labor economist at the workforce analytics firm Lightcast. “That would be incredibly disruptive” and cause “a very, very significant hit on home construction,” he said.

Private employers in the field have been adding jobs for the past decade, with employment levels now topping 8 million, over 1 million more since the pandemic, according to payroll processor ADP. But as Hetrick noted, “the average high school student is not aspiring to do this work,” and the existing workforce is aging — the average homebuilder is 57 years old.

Undocumented workers would likely flee ahead of any national deportation effort, Hetrick said, even though many have been in the U.S. for well over a decade. He expects such a policy would trigger an exodus of people with legal authorization, too.

“That’s exactly what happened in Florida,” he said.
Past as prologue

Last year, the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, enacted a series of restrictions and penalties to deter the employment of undocumented workers. Many immigrant workers hastily left the state even before the policies took effect, with social media videos showing some construction sites sitting empty.

“These laws show that they have no idea what we do,” said Luciano, a carpenter who is originally from Mexico and has worked on residential builds across South Florida for the past decade.

“No one else would work in the conditions in which we work,” the 40-year-old said in Spanish, asking to be identified by his first name because he lacks legal immigration status, despite living in the U.S. for over 20 years. Workers on jobsites “have an entry time but no exit time,” often logging 70-hour weeks in rain and extreme heat, he said.

Taylor recalled fellow Florida builders’ panic at the time of the statewide crackdown but said he reassured them, “Look, just give it six months. We don’t have enough people to enforce it, so they’re coming back.”


While immigration policies affect his business, Taylor said he is “not a one-policy voter.”

Republican state Rep. Rick Roth, who voted for the measure, later conceded that Florida was unprepared for the destabilization it would cause and urged immigrant residents not to flee, saying the law “is not as bad as you heard.”

Some workers returned after realizing the policies weren’t being rigorously enforced, Taylor said: “Sure enough, now things are more normal.”

DeSantis’ office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

When Arizona in 2010 enacted what were then some of the toughest immigration restrictions in the country, Dunn was working in Tempe as an executive at a construction management firm. As the legislation rolled out, he said, “a lot of people moved away, and they just never came back.”

By the time much of the law was overturned in 2012, he said, “Arizona had a bad rap” relative to other states that “were a lot more open and just less of a hassle to go work in.”

Dunn, a Democrat, said he’s “definitely” backing Vice President Kamala Harris, but other construction executives sounded more divided. Marek, a “lifelong Republican,” declined to share how he’s voting but noted that “a lot of Republicans aren’t voting for Trump.”

Taylor also wouldn’t say which candidate he’s supporting but praised Trump’s ability to “get things done.”

“There are many other issues with the economy that we are fighting daily that have nothing to do with immigration reform,” he said. “I am not a one-policy voter.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Trump’s mass deportation plans would be costly. Here’s why

Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN
Sat, October 19, 2024 

Former President Donald Trump vows he’ll kick millions of undocumented immigrants out of the US if he’s reelected.

In the months since cheering supporters waved “mass deportation now” signs at the Republican National Convention, Trump and his surrogates have offered various visions for how they’d achieve this goal. But they’ve left no doubt that it’s a top priority.

“If you’re in the country illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder,” former Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief Tom Homan said in July as he warned that no one would be off the table.


Trump adviser Stephen Miller has touted plans for “the largest domestic deportation operation in US history” and says the military would be involved.

And vice presidential candidate JD Vance says that deporting criminals would be the administration’s initial focus.

Experts say any path a future Trump administration picks would be complicated and costly, due to both the billions of dollars needed to fund mass deportation and the significant ripple effects that would hit the economy.

Here’s a look at some key facts and figures that explain why.
1.5 million

The number of deportations during Trump’s presidency, according to a Migration Policy Institute analysis of government statistics.

On the campaign trail and during his presidency, Trump vowed that deporting undocumented immigrants would be a priority, and claimed as many as 3 million criminals would be deported when he was in office. But ultimately, he deported far fewer people than he’d promised.

In one particularly high-profile instance, Trump announced a massive operation to deport millions of people would be happening imminently in the summer of 2019. While some arrests occurred, the large-scale raids never materialized.

The Biden administration is on pace to match the Trump administration’s deportation numbers, according to the Migration Policy Institute’s analysis.

“Look at the history of ICE and the Trump years, where there was no lack of political will to deport people,” says John Sandweg, an acting director of the agency during the Obama administration. “And the maximum amount they could do (in one year) was 267,000.”

Trump advisers and outside allies told CNN earlier this year that this time, they’ve mapped out a concrete pathway to rapidly implement his immigration policy plans — and lessons learned during his previous term in office have helped them do that.

Why wasn’t Trump able to deport more people when he was in office?

Experts noted then, as they note today, that high costs and complex logistics make mass deportation more complicated than campaign promises suggest.

“It’s nearly impossible to implement,” says Laura Collins, an immigration policy expert at the George W. Bush Presidential Center.

Sandweg says even deporting 1 million people in a year, something vice presidential candidate JD Vance has suggested would be the administration’s starting point, simply isn’t realistic.

“It’s selling a fantasy to people,” he says.
$10,900

The average cost of apprehending, detaining, processing and removing one undocumented immigrant from the United States in 2016, according to figures released by ICE at the time.

That year ICE also said the average cost of transporting one deportee to their home country was $1,978.

Since then, the costs have only grown, Sandweg says, because the migrants coming to the US are from a wider range of countries.

“Now we’re facing a larger migration from all over the world,” he says.

That means deportation flights are more expensive, and the logistics around them are more complicated.

Immigrants deported from the United States arrive in Guatemala City on an ICE deportation flight on February 9, 2017. - John Moore/Getty Images

So what would deporting the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States cost?

In 2015, an analysis Collins co-authored for the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank, estimated arresting and removing all undocumented immigrants from the US would cost at least $100 billion and take 20 years. Recent estimates from immigrant advocates calculated an even higher cost. If 1 million undocumented immigrants are deported per year, mass deportation could cost more than $960 billion over more than a decade, according to the American Immigration Council.

Both of those reports were based on estimates that the undocumented immigrant population is around 11 million people, and the assumption that about 20% of the population could choose to leave the US voluntarily. A Pew Research Center report in July noted the undocumented population has likely grown over the past two years.
$992 million

The amount the Department of Homeland Security budgeted for “soft-sided” temporary detention facilities along the border in fiscal year 2023.

Trump adviser Stephen Miller has said a mass deportation operation would require officials to build massive facilities for immigrant detentions that could hold some 70,000 people — more than 10 times the capacity of the seven soft-sided facilities in the 2023 budget. Miller has described the plan to build new detention space as “greater than any national infrastructure project we’ve done to date.”

Operating a soft-sided shelter can cost up to $40 million a month, according to Jason Houser, a former ICE chief of staff.

“It’s not just about throwing up a tent,” he says. “I have to staff it, I have to put security there, I have to put doctors there, I have to have some sanitation there, I have to put medics there, I have to put childcare there.”

Using more space in state and local jail facilities rather than building new facilities would also come with a hefty price tag, Houser says.

“That’s going to be $300 or $350 a night,” he says.

And if deportations were increased to the level Trump has proposed, detention space isn’t the only thing that would need to grow, Sandweg says. The ICE workforce would need to dramatically increase in size.

“You are talking about an increase of five or six times in the size of ICE operations. … hiring thousands of new officers, building tens of thousands of new detention beds,” he says.

That would require Congress to authorize billions of dollars in additional spending — something Sandweg describes as “incredibly hard.”

And even if that happens, he says, the logistical steps and time needed to hire people and build facilities could easily stretch for an entire presidential term.
1,016 days

The average time it takes for a case to make its way through immigration court, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

This can vary considerably depending on the court location and other factors. On a national level, the already-huge backlog of cases in immigration court has increased significantly during the Biden administration, more than doubling from nearly 1.3 million cases in January 2021 to more than 3.7 million cases today.

The overwhelmed immigration courts would likely slow down any effort to deport more people.

“There are still legal processes that we have to go through in order to remove somebody,” Collins says. “They have the right to mount a defense. … Just because you’re not a citizen doesn’t mean you don’t have legal rights in this country.”

After ICE arrests someone, lengthy delays in immigration court proceedings mean years can pass before a case is completed.

“It doesn’t matter how many people you arrest,” Sandweg says, “because the Constitution requires that they get due process, which means they have an opportunity to pitch their case to an immigration court.”
13

The number of countries deemed “recalcitrant” by the Department of Homeland Security as of 2020. That term applies to countries that generally won’t accept deportation flights or help provide travel documents to their citizens when the US wants to remove them.

The list at the time included China, Cuba, India, and Russia, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Exactly which countries are on the list can fluctuate amid geopolitical turmoil and diplomatic pressure. During the Trump administration, officials used visa sanctions to pressure some uncooperative countries to comply. During the Biden administration, officials negotiated with Mexican authorities to send some deportees from uncooperative countries there.

But agreements over deportation can be fragile. Venezuela, for example, had agreed to accept deportees, but the deal fell apart earlier this year, according to MPI.

It’s a significant issue that a new Trump administration would have to contend with for any major deportation operation, Houser says, particularly given that large numbers of migrants from those countries have come to the US in recent years.

“If they’re Cuban, they’re not going home. If they’re Venezuelan, they’re not going home,” Houser says.

Officials could negotiate deals for a third country to accept deportees, he said. But in the short term, it’s likely a second Trump administration would focus on nationalities that can be deported more quickly, Houser says. If higher numbers remain a priority, Houser says it’s also likely officials won’t focus as much on capturing criminals, because those arrests require more legwork and manpower.

“They’re going to grab the person that’s easily removable, because that will give them the numbers and the imagery,” he says.
4.4 million

The number of US citizens under the age of 18 with at least one undocumented parent, according to Pew Research Center estimates.

Immigrant rights advocates say this figure gets at one of the big impacts of any major deportation operation, noting that these children are often attending schools and are part of communities outside their households. And they point out that whether or not officials hit the higher numerical targets they’ve promised, the impact of any deportations on families and communities would be devastating.

We saw smaller-scale versions of what this can look like during the Trump administration.

After ICE arrested nearly 700 people in raids at seven Mississippi chicken plants in 2019, a local gym opened its doors to kids who’d gotten off their school buses and discovered their parents were missing. TV crews filmed traumatized and desperate kids at the scene, pleading for authorities to release their parents.

After a meatpacking plant raid in rural Tennessee in 2018, 500 kids missed school the next day.

“It was like a bomb had gone off — helicopters flying overhead, children riding the bus home to empty homes, and families desperately trying to find information about their loved ones who were detained — and the effects on the community were felt for years,” says Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.

Community members gather at a prayer vigil at an elementary school in Morristown, Tennessee, in April 2018 after ICE raided a meatpacking plant. - Saul Young/Knoxville News Sentinel/USA Today Network/Imagn Images
8.3 million

The number of undocumented immigrants in the US workforce, according to the Pew Research Center. That’s 5% of the workforce. And the share of undocumented workers is particularly high in certain industries, including construction, agriculture and service.

Economists have been warning that any major deportation effort would have a significant impact far beyond any one particular workplace.

“The economy as a whole downsizes to the detriment of everyone,” says Michael Ettlinger, a senior fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire.

“Removing people that we know are here and working would be shooting ourselves in the foot economically,” Collins says, noting that the impact of immigrant workers also includes what they spend, not just what they earn.

“Anyone who is here and working is also getting haircuts and eating at restaurants and buying groceries and doing lots of things that grow the economy more,” she says.
$96.7 billion

The estimated amount of taxes undocumented immigrants pay annually, according to the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

According to Zeke Hernandez of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, such estimates show that undocumented immigrants make a significant contribution – something governments would miss out on if they’re deported. But Hernandez, author of “The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers,” argues that talking about the taxes these immigrants pay only paints part of the picture.

“The other tax that governments miss out on, which is usually not talked about, are the taxes that businesses would have paid had they been able to expand and grow. … When a business can’t hire and has to either contract or not grow, it will have less profits and less revenue, and therefore pay less in corporate taxes,” he says.

Critics of illegal immigration argue that the cost to US citizens is far outweighed by any taxes undocumented immigrants pay. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which argues for increasing immigration restrictions, estimates Americans pay more than $150 billion annually due to illegal immigration.

The organization also argues that mass deportation would make more jobs available for Americans.

But Hernandez says history has shown that’s not the case.

A study based on an analysis of deportations that occurred during the Obama-era “Secure Communities” program, for example, indicates 88,000 US-born workers would lose jobs for every 1 million unauthorized immigrants deported.

Why would deportations hurt US-born workers?

Businesses end up investing less in growing or creating new companies, and more in technologies that replace lower-skilled workers, Hernandez says.

The recent study provides a telling example, he says, of how large-scale deportation efforts have ripple effects beyond immigrant communities. The economic impact of mass deportation, he says, would amount to “utter disaster.”

“We Americans, we, the country, we, in our communities, would be significantly damaged,” he says.

Can Donald Trump use a 1798 law to carry out mass deportations?

Maria Ramirez Uribe
Sun, October 20, 2024
Austin American-Statesman

A cornerstone of former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign has been his promise to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. The details for how he would carry out the plan have been unclear. But at recent rallies, Trump has said he would use an 18th-century law to enforce mass deportations.

The operation would begin in Aurora, Colo., and would be called "Operation Aurora," Trump said at an Oct. 11 rally in Reno, Nev., adding baselessly that immigrants are "trying to conquer us."

At an Oct. 11 campaign rally in Aurora, he said he’d invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to expedite gang members’ removal and to "target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil."

Trump was referring to a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, which he said has taken over "multiple apartment complexes" in Aurora. Claims that a Venezuelan gang had taken over Aurora started in August, when a video of a group of Spanish-speaking armed men walking in a city apartment complex went viral. However, local officials have pushed back, saying that concerns about Venezuelan gangs in Aurora are "grossly exaggerated."

Aurora police say they’ve arrested Tren de Aragua gang members but haven’t said they had taken over apartment complexes.

Here’s what we know about the 1798 law Trump promised to invoke and what legal experts say about Trump’s ability to use it for mass deportations:
What is the Alien Enemies Act of 1798?

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is part of a larger set of four laws — the Alien and Sedition Acts — that the United States passed as it feared an impending war with France. The laws increased citizenship requirements, criminalized statements critical of the government and gave the president additional powers to deport noncitizens.

Three of the laws were repealed or expired. The Alien Enemies Act is the only one still in place.

The law lets the president detain and deport people from a "hostile nation or government" without a hearing when the U.S. is either at war with that foreign country or the foreign country has "perpetrated, attempted, or threatened" an invasion or raid legally called a "predatory incursion" against the U.S.

"Although the law was enacted to prevent foreign espionage and sabotage in wartime, it can be — and has been — wielded against immigrants who have done nothing wrong" and who are legally in the U.S., Katherine Yon Ebright, an expert on constitutional war powers at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank at New York University School of Law, wrote in an Oct. 9 report.
The law was last invoked during World War II

U.S. presidents have invoked the law three times, only during wartime:

The War of 1812: Then-President James Madison invoked the act against British people who were required to report information including their age, the length of time they’d lived in the U.S. and whether they’d applied for citizenship.


World War I: Then-President Woodrow Wilson used it against people from Germany and its allies, such as Austria-Hungary.


World War II: Then-President Franklin Roosevelt invoked the act "to detain allegedly potentially dangerous enemy aliens," according to the National Archives. Mainly these were German, Italian and Japanese people. The act was used to place noncitizens from those countries in internment camps. The act was not used to detain U.S. citizens of Japanese descent. An executive order was used for that.
Can Trump use the act to carry out mass deportations?

Former President Donald Trump, participating in a town hall last month in Florida, has said he will conduct mass deportations beginning in Aurora, Colo.

Trump has mentioned enforcing the 1798 law against Mexican drug cartels and Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang.

Legal experts said Trump does not have the authority to invoke the Alien Enemies Act against gang members or as a tool for mass deportations.

To invoke the act, an invasion must be perpetrated or threatened by a foreign government. The U.S. is not at war with any foreign government. The law also can’t be used broadly for people from every country.

Invoking the act "as a turbocharged deportation authority … is at odds with centuries of legislative, presidential, and judicial practice, all of which confirm that the Alien Enemies Act is a wartime authority," Ebright said in her report. "Invoking it in peacetime to bypass conventional immigration law would be a staggering abuse."

Trump and his allies have characterized the rise in illegal immigration under President Joe Biden as an invasion. Legal and immigration experts have disagreed with the characterization.

The illegal migration or drug smuggling at the southern border is not an invasion, Ilya Somin, a George Mason University constitutional law professor wrote in an Oct. 13 report.

Legal experts have said that an attempt to use the Alien Enemies Act for mass deportations is likely to be challenged in court. However, it’s unclear whether the courts would issue a ruling.

A court last heard a case regarding the Alien Enemies Act after World War II. Then-President Harry Truman had continued Roosevelt’s invocation of the act for years after the war’s end. At the time, the court ruled that whether a war had ended and whether wartime authorities had expired were "political questions" and therefore not up to courts to decide.

Similarly, some courts have said that the definition of an invasion is a political question.
Trump has previously promised mass deportations

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump promised to deport all immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. However, he did not do it.

When Trump entered office, an estimated 11 million people were illegally in the country. From fiscal years 2017 to 2020, the Department of Homeland Security recorded 2 million deportations. (Fiscal year 2017 included about four months of President Barack Obama’s administration.) By comparison, Obama carried out 3.2 million and 2.1 million deportations during each of his terms.

The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, reported in June that the Biden administration has carried out 4.4 million deportations, "more than any single presidential term since the George W. Bush administration (5 million in its second term)."

Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown University constitutional law professor, wrote in his newsletter Oct. 14 that there are already immigration laws that allow for deportations. But a main challenge against carrying out a mass deportation operation is the lack of resources required to find, detain and deport a large number of people.

"Relying on an old statute won’t help solve the resources problem," Vladeck said. ​
Our sources

C-SPAN, Former President Trump Campaigns in Reno, Nevada, Oct. 11, 2024


C-SPAN, Former President Trump Campaigns in Aurora, Colorado, Oct. 11, 2024


PolitiFact, City officials and residents say there is no Venezuelan gang "takeover" in Aurora, Colorado, Sept. 9, 2024


Aurora Police Department, Post, Aug. 31, 2024


Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman, Statement, Oct. 8, 2024


National Archives, Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), accessed Oct. 17, 2024


Brennan Center, The Alien Enemies Act, Explained, Oct. 9, 2024


Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Alien Enemies Documents (War of 1812), 1812-1815, accessed Oct. 17, 2024


National Archives, World War I Enemy Alien Records, accessed Oct. 17, 2024


Lawfare, Immigration is Not Invasion, March 25, 2024


Just Security, Immigration Is Not an "Invasion" under the Constitution, Jan. 29, 2024


PolitiFact, The context behind Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s dueling immigration speeches at the Texas border, March 1, 2024


The Volokh Conspiracy, Trump's Plan to Use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as a Tool for Mass Deportation, Oct. 13, 2024


PolitiFact, Donald Trump does not keep promise to deport all immigrants illegally in the US, July 15, 2020


Pew Research Center, Unauthorized immigrant population trends for states, birth countries and regions, June 12, 2019


PolitiFact, Ron DeSantis is right, Barack Obama deported more people than Donald Trump did, Jan. 4, 2024


Migration Policy Institute, The Biden Administration Is on Pace to Match Trump Deportation Numbers—Focusing on the Border, Not the U.S. Interior, June 27, 2024


One First, Alien Enemies in the Supreme Court, Oct. 14, 2024


Trump campaign statement, Oct. 17, 2024

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Can Donald Trump use a 1798 law to carry out mass deportations?