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.

By Carl Davis, Marco Guzman, & Emma Sifre

Key Findings

Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. Most of that amount, $59.4 billion, was paid to the federal government while the remaining $37.3 billion was paid to state and local governments. Undocumented immigrants paid federal, state, and local taxes of $8,889 per person in 2022. In other words, for every 1 million undocumented immigrants who reside in the country, public services receive $8.9 billion in additional tax revenue. More than a third of the tax dollars paid by undocumented immigrants go toward payroll taxes dedicated to funding programs that these workers are barred from accessing. Undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance taxes in 2022. At the state and local levels, slightly less than half (46 percent, or $15.1 billion) of the tax payments made by undocumented immigrants are through sales and excise taxes levied on their purchases. Most other payments are made through property taxes, such as those levied on homeowners and renters (31 percent, or $10.4 billion), or through personal and business income taxes (21 percent, or $7.0 billion). Six states raised more than $1 billion each in tax revenue from undocumented immigrants living within their borders. Those states are California ($8.5 billion), Texas ($4.9 billion), New York ($3.1 billion), Florida ($1.8 billion), Illinois ($1.5 billion), and New Jersey ($1.3 billion). In a large majority of states (40), undocumented immigrants pay higher state and local tax rates than the top 1 percent of households living within their borders. Income tax payments by undocumented immigrants are affected by laws that require them to pay more than otherwise similarly situated U.S. citizens. Undocumented immigrants are often barred from receiving meaningful tax credits and sometimes do not claim refunds they are owed due to lack of awareness, concern about their immigration status, or insufficient access to tax preparation assistance. Providing access to work authorization for undocumented immigrants would increase their tax contributions both because their wages would rise and because their rates of tax compliance would increase. Under a scenario where work authorization is provided to all current undocumented immigrants, their tax contributions would rise by $40.2 billion per year to $136.9 billion. Most of the new revenue raised in this scenario ($33.1 billion) would flow to the federal government while the remainder ($7.1 billion) would flow to states and localities.

Washington, DC:  Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 2024. 42p.