A Senate hearing was held on December 10, 2024, on mass deportations. This hearing was conducted by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. I have predicted that Trump will abandon his mass deportation plan and revert to cancelling DACA and terminating early many temporary visas. Reichlin-Melnick’s testimony lays out the case against mass deportation in a way that the majority of the American media will likely echo.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick is the senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. Here is his resume. He is a 2014 graduate of Georgetown Law School. Here is the Council’s website blog entry on mass deportation.
In an X posting, he wrote, “Not even most ICE agents want to barge into churches or schools and carry out arrests. But the Trump admin wants people to be afraid; so they want nowhere to seem safe, no matter how draconian and brutal the operation may seem and how much backlash it may generate.”
Riechlin-Melnick’s remarks (transcribed by Word dictation):
At the Council we have long studied the population of immigrants in the United States and provide detailed estimates of their demographics and economic contributions…. Today there are at least 13 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. President-elect Trump has promised a mass deportation campaign with the stated intent of rounding up and deporting every single one of them.
So, who are they? Well, most of them have been here for at least 15 years, having entered before the Obama administration. Over 4.8 million people have been here for 25 years or more, with no path to permanent legal status, no line for them to stand in. Most undocumented immigrants have spent decades living, working, and putting down roots. All at constant risk of deportation. Nearly all are either employed or attending school. Some have permission to work legally most do not, putting them at increased risk of exploitation. They are farm workers, meat packers, cooks, waiters, construction workers, factory workers, delivery people, home health aides, nurses, teachers, artists, writers, musicians, entrepreneurs, and, yes, even lawyers.
Undocumented immigrants are also more than their jobs. They are parents, spouses, partners, brothers and sisters, grandparents and grandchildren, loved ones and friends to millions of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. 5 million U.S. citizen children have at least one undocumented parent. In an average public school classroom of 25 children at least two have an undocumented immigrant parent at risk of deportation. While president-elect Trump talks about targeting criminals, over 90% have had no prior criminal record whatsoever. Of the small minority that do, the most common prior convictions are traffic offenses or immigration offenses. Efforts to ramp up deportations would sweep in tens of thousands of people each year who have no or minimal criminal legal system contact. We know this because this is what happened during the first Trump administration, when there were no enforcement priorities. Everyone was an enforcement priority, and the single largest group of the increased arrests under the Trump administration was people with no criminal record.
A mass deportation campaign would be a costly mistake for American taxpayers, when we account for the enormous capital investment, infrastructure and hiring necessary to arrest detain process and remove 1,000,000 people per year. We estimate that mass deportations would cost $968 billion in total, enough to instead construct 2.9 million new homes or fund Head Start for 79 years. Mass deportations would also cause economic chaos, as millions are expelled the US population and labor force would shrink. So too with the economy: prices would rise in sectors with significant undocumented workforces, building maintaining and repairing houses would become more expensive, as would groceries, restaurants, travel, and childcare. Every American would feel the pinch of inflation.
Overall, we estimate that a mass deportation campaign would lead to a loss in total GDP of 4.2% to 6.8% at minimum, as much as the Great Recession. And just like then, many Americans would lose their jobs. Even an attempt to deport millions of people will have repercussions. After all, undocumented immigrants are not just producers they’re also consumers. Collectively they hold over a quarter trillion dollars in annual purchasing power. If millions are deported or otherwise forced to leave, American businesses will close, not just from a lack of workers but also from a lack of customers. A large-scale mass deportation campaign will also increase exploitation. While it is carried out, unscrupulous employers will dangle deportation over any of their workers who dare to push back. And we’ll have the full force of the US government to support their threats.
But mass deportation is not the only option. Congress could instead create a new path to permanent legal status, allowing many people already living here to file an application go through a background check, pay a fee, and get their papers in order. When the Council studied the impact of Reagan’s 1986 amnesty, we concluded that legalization would be the cheapest federal workforce development and anti-poverty program to for children in history. It would also raise overall wages, create new jobs, increase tax revenues, and create a level playing field and fair competition for USA workers.
The President-elect’s mass deportation plans would crash the American economy, break up families and take a hammer to the foundations of our society by deporting nearly 4% of the entire US population. But Congress has a choice instead of going down that path. We can instead crack down on exploitation, strengthen millions of families, and build American prosperity by providing undocumented immigrants a way to fix their papers. The choice is clear. Thank you.