Trump Immigration Purge Will Squeeze Workforces, Report Says (1)

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown will remove more than 1 million workers from the construction and housing industry and nearly 7 million from labor force overall, a new report projects.

That pressure on the workforce will fuel inflation, leading to higher costs for consumers, according to the report released Thursday by FWD.us, a group that advocates for bipartisan immigration reform.

The group projects that the typical US household will pay $2,150 more for goods and services by the end of 2028. FWD.us analyzed the impact of Trump policies revoking work permits from immigrants with temporary protections, deporting millions without legal status, and tightening lawful immigration pathways.

“We’re really moving in the wrong direction, is what this data shows,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us. “These policies will come with substantial costs to American families.”

In recent months, the Department of Homeland Security has terminated Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Venezuela, Afghanistan, Cameroon, and Nepal. It’s also revoked removal protections and work permits for more than half a million immigrants paroled into the US from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. And US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained a record number of immigrants as part of the administration’s mass deportation agenda.

A significant share of workers lost in construction and housing—more than 44 percent—would be tied to revocation of work permits for immigrants with temporary protections like TPS and parole, according to the report. Leisure and hospitality employers would lose more than 360,000 workers because of work permit terminations.

But the agriculture and food industry in particular would be squeezed by deportations targeting immigrants without any legal status, losing more than a quarter million workers, FWD.us projects.

President Donald Trump this month said he would shield farmers from immigration crackdowns, saying the administration didn’t want to hurt people who aren’t criminals. But the administration days later reversed a reprieve for those employers.

Supply Shock

The report shows that the administration’s immigration policies “are not just cruel. They are economically reckless,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).

“At a time when Americans are hurting, we should be working to improve the cost of living,” he said in a statement.

Under the Biden administration, an influx of immigrants helped the US to slow inflation without a hard landing in the economy, said former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin.

“If you have an inflation problem and high prices, the best thing is more supply,” he said. “This runs the experiment in reverse.”

Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said “if there was any correlation between rampant illegal immigration and a good economy, Biden would have had a booming economy.”

Farmers, dairy producers, and garment manufacturers have struggled to find workers in recent weeks—or seen them fail to show up—as workplace raids and other actions scare immigrant workers off the job.

Holtz-Eakin, now president of the American Action Forum, said the US faces a long-term labor problem because of declining native-born population. Future labor force growth will depend on immigration policy decisions, he said.

“The business community is well aware of this,” he said. “Deporting workers, revoking work authorization is just accelerating the problem and making it more tangible right now.”