The Mistake of Deporting Workers

Maribel Hastings

Posted August 27, 2026

With two and a half months to go before the November 3 midterm elections, the Trump administration is stepping up its efforts to sow distrust in the electoral system and instill fear among voters by claiming there is an “invasion” of undocumented immigrants. Everything is tied to immigration: that non-citizens are voting fraudulently, and that the number of undocumented immigrants among us exceeds “25 million,” according to the president.

This is happening while his administration attacks immigration on all fronts.

Forbes magazine reported that “the Trump administration is implementing widespread restrictions on legal immigration, affecting U.S. citizens sponsoring family, employers, and various visa categories like Diversity Visas and refugees.”

The article states that “the Trump administration’s policies will reduce legal immigration to the United States by an estimated 33% to 50%, or by 1.5 million to 2.4 million legal immigrants, by the end of Donald Trump’s four-year term, according to a January 2026 National Foundation for American Policy analysis.” “This is expected to harm the economy, including a reduction of $1.9 trillion in goods and services.”

On the issue of elections, Trump and his officials insist that there is a widespread problem of voter fraud. Some speculate that he may try to declare a “state of emergency” to intervene in the November elections.

Regarding the number of undocumented immigrants, the Migration Policy Institute published an analysis in July concluding that “approximately 15.8 million unauthorized immigrants lived in the United States as of mid-2024, after hovering in the 11 million range throughout the decade beginning in 2010.”

Trump claims there are more than 25 million undocumented immigrants.

With its deportation machine, the Trump administration is shooting itself in the foot. Polls show that Trump and the Republicans are in trouble with voters because they mismanage the economy. And their immigration policies are making the economy worse because detentions and deportations reduce the size of the workforce in key industries, causing prices for goods and services to rise. This is what America’s Voice calls “the ICE tax.”

It drives up the cost of food, housing, and services such as yard care, landscaping, childcare, and care for the sick or elderly.

To make matters worse, it is taxpayers who foot the bill for every detention and deportation while simultaneously losing billions of dollars in income, sales, and property taxes—federal, state, and local—paid by undocumented immigrants and authorized immigrants who have lost their protections.

The Economic Policy Institute calculated how much each state and each taxpayer pays to deport workers.

For example, Miami-Dade County in Florida, which voted for Trump in 2024, would spend $3.7 billion on detentions and deportations for the remainder of Trump’s term. That’s $4,023 per taxpayer. With that same money, 15,816 teachers, 15,095 firefighters, and 11,157 nurses could be hired, or 266,702 people could be added to Medicaid and 121,385 children to Head Start, according to the Institute.

And Los Angeles County, California, would spend $9.2 billion on detentions and deportations for the remainder of the Trump administration. That amounts to $2,769 per taxpayer. With that same money, 24,325 teachers, 24,079 firefighters, and 16,633 nurses could be hired, or 418,531 people could be added to Medicaid and 162,859 children to Head Start.

David Bier, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute, wrote that Trump and his team exaggerate the numbers of undocumented immigrants for political gain. Still, in the end, it works against them.

“The math is simple. The more illegal immigrants, the more Americans would have to pay to deport them. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that a single deportation costs on average $18,245. This means that when Trump invents the presence of 10 million more immigrants, he’s adding a theoretical $182.4 billion to the price tag,” Bier wrote.

Not to mention the loss of revenue for the Treasury. “The Congressional Budget Office estimated that recent illegal immigrant arrivals would have cut deficits by nearly $1 trillion over 10 years, and found that Trump’s crackdown in 2025 had already erased $500 billion of those savings,” he added.

Because deporting workers harms the economy.

Maribel Hastings is a Senior Advisor to América’s Voice.