Proposed 2024 Mass Deportation Program Would Socially and Economically Devastate American Families
By Matthew Lisiecki and Gerard Apruzzese
In 2017, the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) analyzed the effects of a mass deportation program for undocumented immigrants proposed by then-President Donald Trump (Warren & Kerwin 2017). With now-candidate Trump reintroducing a similar proposal as a key element of his platform, CMS has conducted a new analysis using the most recent available data: the 2022 American Community Survey microdata, released by the US Census Bureau (Ruggles et al. 2024). In this report, we highlight the devastation of mass deportation on both undocumented residents and their US citizen and legal noncitizen families and communities. We discuss individual, household, and family characteristics of the 10.9 million undocumented residents living in the US, and 4.7 million households with both undocumented residents and residents with permanent legal status (referred to henceforth as “mixed status” households). We investigate the economic effect of the deportation on US citizens and undocumented residents, as well as the negative fiscal impact on the broader economy should mass deportation be carried out.
Key findings of the updated analysis include:
5.8 million US households are home to at least one undocumented resident. Of those, 4.7 million households are home to undocumented residents and US citizens or others with legal status. Therefore, mass deportation threatens to break up nearly 5 million American families.
Over half of the US undocumented population is woven into American life, having been in the country for at least 10 years; their deportation would damage long-standing communities.
Mass deportation would push nearly 10 million US citizens into economic hardship. Median household income for mixed-status households would drop from $75,500 to $39,000 (a drop of over 48 percent).
5.5 million US-born children live in households with at least one undocumented resident, including 1.8 million living in households with two undocumented parents.
The monetary cost of paying to complete the upbringing of these US-born children in the event of mass deportation is estimated to be at least $116.5 billion.
Undocumented workers contribute an estimated $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes; their removal from the workforce would have a substantial impact on local economies.
This report is one of several CMS publications outlining the negative impacts of a mass deportation policy for undocumented immigrants. In 2017, we analyzed the social and economic impacts of mass deportation using Census Bureau data from 2014 (Warren & Kerwin 2017). Earlier in 2024, we explored other immediate and downstream impacts of the Trump campaign’s proposed mass deportation policy, including the moral, legal, and public safety crisis caused by implementing a mass search-and-seizure operation across the nation.
New York: Center for Migration Studies, 2024. 7p.