The government can deport individuals whose immigration status has been determined to be illegal, or who are found to have committed a serious crime. They may be sent back to their country of origin or to another location in the United States, such as an immigrant detention center or a refugee camp. Deportation is costly for the American economy and devastating to families and communities. It can result in lost income for businesses, reduced economic output, and increased consumer prices.
Despite the widespread belief that deportation is inevitable, a growing body of evidence shows that policies designed to remove large numbers of people are often costly, damaging to communities, and do not achieve their stated goals. Weighing the cost and real-world effects of deportation against its declared goals is critical for policymakers.
Most unauthorized immigrants are not criminals, and they provide substantial economic contributions. The prevailing view used to be that if one immigrant was deported, it would free up a job for a U.S.-born worker, but studies have shown that this is not the case. Unauthorized workers fill many occupations that are not easily shifted to U.S.-born workers, such as construction laborers or cooks, and the loss of these workers has a negative impact on business operations and on the U.S. economy.
For example, a study of the economic costs of separating families by deportation found that each unauthorized immigrant removed from the country incurs a cost to the economy. The average household income for these families falls by $51,200, and the number of children in their households drops from 8.5 to six per family. This would place a financial burden on all Americans, including the tens of billions in federal, state, and local tax revenues that would be lost along with trillions of dollars in GDP from lost work hours.
Mass deportations also would have severe economic impacts on the nation. The removal of millions of workers from essential sectors of the economy could cause businesses to reduce hiring, which will lead to lower production and higher consumer prices. In addition, the plight of mixed-status families, in which a spouse or parent is undocumented, will destabilize communities and create enormous stress for children.
The costs of a massive deportation campaign, even with limited resources, would be tremendous and far-reaching. It would involve a costly expansion of immigration enforcement efforts and disruptions to communities, and it could lead to racial profiling and wide-ranging violations of civil rights. Moreover, a massive increase in deportations would strain the social fabric and impose significant costs to Americans of all backgrounds, as well as destabilize the economies of countries of origin. All of these costs fall on the American taxpayer and are a waste of resources that could be better spent on priorities like education, infrastructure, and healthcare. This brief questions commonly held assumptions about the inevitability of deportation and identifies reform proposals that can help put an end to it.