By Olivier Acuña Barba •
Published: 04 Jul 2025 • 22:31
• 2 minutes read
US immigrant deportation plan will cause more harm than good, experts say | Credit: Fishman64/Shutterstock
US President Donald Trump could not be more serious about ridding the country of illegal immigrants and other persons his Administration deems unworthy to live in the United States, as his “One Big Beautiful Bill which was finally approved, includes $175 billion for that cause.
First and foremost, Trump has promised to remove all illegal immigrants from the US, which, according to the Federation of American Immigration Reform, totals approximately 18.6 million as of March 2025.
Removing that many illegal immigrants from the country could have a counterproductive effect, according to economists, who have long warned that deporting them all would have severe consequences, including adding nearly $1 trillion to the national debt, because of the impact it would have on industries that rely on them.
Trump’s deportations could backfire
“Tax revenue losses exceed the expenses for this population so significantly (that) there’s no scenario that you can cook up where they’re going to actually reduce the deficit by spending $150 billion on immigration enforcement,” said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the CATO Institute. “It’s just fantasy.”
The head of the libertarian think tank added that Trump’s megabill ignores the loss of tax revenues from illegal immigrants who would be deported, and the impact they have on the industries they work for.
According to Bier’s calculations, the deportation funds in the megabill will add approximately $900 billion to the debt, according to Cronkite News.
Trump’s bill allocates $47 billion to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection for the expansion of the border wall, as well as the installation of cameras and other detection technologies.
The megabill includes $30 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to hire at least 8,500 new enforcement officers, as well as at least 2,000 attorneys and support staff to expedite deportations.
It also contemplates $45 billion to boost ICE detention capacity, enough to house at least 116,000 non-citizens daily, according to an analysis from the American Immigration Council.
ICE, largest enforcement agency
The funding would make the ICE budget larger than that of any other federal law enforcement agency – 60 per cent larger than the Bureau of Prisons, which houses approximately 155,000 inmates. ICE will have more officers than the FBI.
During a visit to the “Alligator Alcatraz” migrant detention facility in Florida that same day, Trump asserted that the “average illegal alien costs American taxpayers an estimated $70,000.”
An analysis from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute estimated that the deportation provisions in the megabill will put 6 million people out of work, including 2.6 million born in the U.S.
Only 40% have convictions
“While Trump and other conservatives claim that increased arrests, detentions, and deportations will somehow magically create jobs for U.S. born workers, the existing evidence shows that the opposite is true; they will cause immense harm to workers and families, shrink the economy, and weaken the labor market for everyone,” wrote the author of the analysis, Ben Zipperer.
ICE is already holding a record 59,000 people in detention, 50 per cent more than at the end of the Joe Biden Administration. Only about 40 per cent of people ICE has detained since Trump took office had criminal convictions of any type, and only 8.4 per cent had convictions for violent crimes, according to an analysis by CBS News.
