By Andrew Moss
Knoxville Sun
Jan 10, 2025 - Donald Trump pledged to start deporting undocumented migrants “on day one” of his administration, and that day is quickly approaching.
If Trump’s working-class voters believe that deporting 13.3 million people will somehow better their economic lives, many will soon realize that mass deportation harms all working people, not just migrants, and will worsen a growing, oppressive inequality.
Firstly, consider the anticipated labor shortages in agriculture and construction. Almost three-quarters of agricultural workers are immigrants, with 40 percent of them being undocumented. About one-fifth of the construction workforce is also undocumented. Since these undocumented immigrants represent such a significant share of employment in these critical industries, their deportation will lead to severe labor shortages, likely driving up food prices and impeding efforts to increase housing supply.
Additionally, consider the expected decline in tax revenues and contributions to Medicare and Social Security. Undocumented workers do pay taxes and contribute to Medicare and Social Security; their removal would result in billions in lost local, state, and federal tax revenues (for instance, $76.1 billion in 2022 alone) alongside billions more in lost contributions to Medicare and Social Security ($28.3 billion annually).
A mass deportation initiative would cost taxpayers enormous amounts to manage the process of rounding up, detaining, and deporting 13.3 million individuals: estimates suggest $88 billion a year if one million people are deported annually or $315 billion if all 13.3 million are deported in a single year, according to the American Immigration Council. (The Council notes that the former sum could be better utilized over 10 years to build 2.9 million new homes or for other essential social investments).
Someone will have to finance the deportation of millions. If Republican lawmakers get their way, it won’t be the billionaires and multimillionaires who have aligned themselves with Trump. Donald Trump is committed to making permanent the individual tax cuts that, much like the corporate and individual cuts he signed in 2017, favor the wealthiest in the nation. Extending these cuts would add $4.6 trillion to the federal deficit over several years, according to Congressional Budget Office projections. Thus, the enormous expense of mass deportation necessitates cuts elsewhere to fund it—and the burden will inevitably rest on lower-income Americans.
Elon Musk (net worth: $416.8 billion) and Vivek Ramaswamy (net worth: $800 million to $1 billion) have been recruited by Trump to find ways to trim the federal budget, claiming that $500 billion could be cut. One can only speculate about the financial juggling required to fund such an expensive deportation initiative while simultaneously cutting hundreds of billions in tax revenues.
However, the proposed cuts to Medicaid, the largest single source of health coverage in the nation that primarily serves low-income Americans, are all too real. Proposed by House Republicans and promoted by the Heritage Foundation in its Project 2025, these cuts could range from $459 billion to $742 billion over several years, severely underfunding or eliminating health services for many individuals (Medicaid covers 72 million people overall).
When you connect all the dots—the vast financial implications of mass deportation, the revenue losses from expelling millions of earners and from tax cuts benefiting the wealthy, and the potential cuts to essential social and health services—you begin to understand the substantial harm that deportation will inflict on all working people and the nation as a whole.
Much of this damage is fueled by racially based scapegoating, a powerful divide-and-rule tactic that pits individuals against each other and groups against each other, corrupting society as it normalizes cruelty towards the most vulnerable populations. This strategy works for a simple reason: fear sells.
Yet fear and financial figures do not create the complete picture. Alongside advocacy groups and sanctuary jurisdictions (cities, counties, and states) that uphold and promote immigrants’ rights, the vital role of unions emerges in affirming the solidarity of all workers, regardless of their immigration status. In my hometown of Los Angeles, where immigrants make up a substantial portion of the workforce, visionary and courageous union leaders in the 1990s recognized that immigrants’ rights and workers’ rights were inseparable. They began organizing around this core idea, transforming the political landscape of the city and ultimately influencing national immigration policies through the AFL-CIO.
We now stand on the brink of a renewed large-scale struggle for the dignity, rights, and well-being of all working people in this country. Much depends on the creativity, energy, and discipline brought to this struggle—as well as the success in fostering a shared vision of solidarity and mutual support among workers, regardless of their background or status.
Andrew Moss, syndicated by PeaceVoice, writes on politics, labor, and nonviolence from Los Angeles. He is an emeritus professor (Nonviolence Studies, English) from California State University.
