This month, the Trump administration announced the resurrection of immigration detention centers that will hold families — a practice that had ended under former President Joe Biden. Officials this week also moved to convert Biden-era CBP One app — which used to help asylum seekers waiting in Mexico make appointments with U.S. officials to begin protection requests — into CBP Home, an app which asks undocumented immigrants to report their plans to self deport.
They’re the latest steps in the administration's mass deportation campaign that experts say will have ripple effects throughout U.S. communities and the economy.
Immigrants work in everything from agriculture and health care, to contracting, education, and construction. Michael Ettlinger, senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said the uncertainty mass deportation brings could affect how consumers spend money.
“If I’m a homeowner, am I gonna make a down payment on a kitchen remodel if the contractor may lose their work authorization and be removed from the country,” he said.
Ettlinger said a lack of immigrant labor could also cause wages and job availability to fall for non-immigrant workers — as companies facing uncertainty may choose to downsize — and mass deportation campaigns of the past have actually resulted in a loss of jobs for native-born workers as well.
“Employers can’t find U.S.-born replacements for the deported immigrants, for the kinds of jobs they do, so they downsize their business as a whole, that means layoffs or lower pay for their non-immigrant employees,” he said.
