Study: Mass Deportation Could Put 28 Million People at Risk of Family Separation

It would reduce job prospects for native-born workers, too.

More than 28 million members of mixed–immigration status households in the United States are at risk of deportation or family separation if mass deportation policies, such as those supported by former President Donald Trump, are enacted next year, according to a report from FWD.us, an immigration advocacy organization. Mass deportation is already known to carry a steep economic toll. The moral cost may be just as high.

Roughly 11.3 million U.S. residents and 2.4 million lawful permanent residents live in a mixed-status household, which is defined as at least one undocumented person living with at least one U.S. citizen, green card holder, or other lawful temporary immigrant. Undocumented residents include those with protections such as Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

The cost of Trump's proposed mass deportation plan could reach nearly $1 trillion due to the decline in labor and federal tax revenue. Earlier this year, Trump promised to end TPS for Haitian immigrants, and in 2020, he attempted to terminate DACA, which the Supreme Court blocked (though the program is still facing legal challenges).

A fact sheet from the American Immigration Council (AIC), a pro-immigration nonprofit, notes that U.S. citizens who are the children of undocumented immigrants have a higher risk of depression, anxiety, and severe psychological distress following the detention or deportation of a parent. The detention or deportation of a family member is also associated with higher rates of suicidal thought, alcohol use, and aggression among Latino adolescents, according to a study cited by the AIC.

Mass deportation continues to have high support despite the moral costs of separating families. An August 2024 poll from the Pew Research Center found that 56 percent of registered voters either strongly or somewhat favored "enforcing mass deportations." In the same poll, however, 61 percent of registered voters said that undocumented immigrants should be allowed to "stay in the country legally, if certain requirements are met."

Some have attributed this discrepancy to voters being confused about the issue while also wanting some action. The potential moral and economic costs of mass deportation are numerous and complicated, and they could range widely depending on the specific plan.

A working paper from the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), an economic policy think tank, examines the potential economic effects of mass deportation.

It describes two scenarios: "a low-end estimate based on President Dwight D. Eisenhower's deportation of 1.3 million persons in 1956 under what was officially called 'Operation Wetback' and a high-end count based on a Pew Research Center study that estimated approximately 8.3 million workers in the US were unauthorized in 2022."

Both would hurt the U.S. economy. The low-end scenario, involving the deportation of 1.3 million undocumented workers by 2028, would lower GDP by 1.2 percent below baseline projections. The high-end scenario, which would see 8.3 million undocumented workers deported, would reduce GDP by 7.4 percent compared to the 2028 baseline.

Michael A. Clemens, a senior fellow at the PIIE and economics professor at George Mason University, points out that similar effects have already been felt due to mass deportation within recent memory.

Clemens tells Reason that "mass deportations under [Barack] Obama caused permanent reductions in jobs available for natives: every 100 deportations caused the permanent elimination of 8.8 jobs held by native workers, county-by-county." This was due to the decrease in immigrant consumers and fewer business owners investing their capital in lower-skilled and more labor-intensive industries.

If Trump achieves 3 million deportations per year, this "would mean 263,000 fewer jobs held by US native workers, compounded each additional year that mass deportations continue," according to Clemens.

Anti-immigration politicians who support mass deportation efforts like Operation Wetback ignore how pro-immigration policies offset that initiative's economic costs, per Clemens. For instance, the Bracero Program, which was started under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and continued under Eisenhower, increased the number of lawful, temporary, and employment-based visas for Mexican workers. This shifted "mutually beneficial international labor supply from the black market to lawful channels," wrote Clemens.

Mass deportation is expensive and morally corrupt. Rather than proposing blanket plans that don't fix the immigration system, the government should look to a better solution—making legal immigration more feasible.