Washington, DC —As America’s Voice has been highlighting, Donald Trump and key allies have been making clear that his proposed “largest deportation operation in the history of our country” would be unsparing and indiscriminate in targeting immigrants and would, if enacted, devastate the U.S. workforce and economy and violently disrupt families and communities throughout America.
Key voices are weighing in to highlight the costs and consequences for all Americans if Trump enacts his mass deportation pledge. In an op-ed published in English and Spanish by Univision, AV Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas highlights why Trump’s pledge is “The most consequential immigration – and economic – issue of the 2024 campaign.”
Below, find an excerpted version of the opinion column by Vanessa Cárdenas as well as excerpts from recent commentaries and analysis from Isabel Dias at Mother Jones and Rick Newman at Yahoo Finance underscoring the costs and consequences of unsparing mass deportations.
- Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice, with Univision op-ed in English and Spanish, “The most consequential immigration – and economic – issue of the 2024 campaign,” (see Spanish version here) states:
“What a sad reflection that the Republican Party has moved from Abraham Lincoln, who said immigration was a ‘source of national wealth and strength’ and Ronald Reagan, who called for his ‘city on the hill’ to be ‘open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here,’ to Donald Trump, who says immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country,’ and whose 2024 RNC speech pledged the largest deportation operation in American history – including the mass purge, mass roundup and mass detention of long-settled immigrants, such as Dreamers and those in mixed status American families.
For anyone thinking this is just political messaging or only signs and rally chants that Republicans won’t really push for, RNC week should serve as a wake-up call. Their anti-immigrant ugliness and the mass deportation agenda are at the top of their new party platform and they are preparing for implementation.
Trump’s mass deportation plan is the most consequential immigration – and economic – issue of the 2024 campaign. It would involve deploying red state National Guard troops in blue state communities and mass detention camps run by the military. And it wouldn’t just be targeted at recent migrants who have been a political flashpoint, but also on long-settled immigrants.
…Ultimately, we need to manage migration, not suppress it. We need a functional immigration system that is consistent with our values and serves the needs of our nation. Not the dystopian future that Trump is promising which would rip apart our economy, families, and communities.”
- Isabel Dias in Mother Jones, “How Trump’s “Mass Deportation” Plan Would Ruin America,” notes, “Not only would Trump’s plan rip families and communities apart, but it also would have devastating effects for years to come, including on US citizens who perhaps have overlooked how integral undocumented immigrants are to their everyday life … Even if not fully realized, Trump’s plot would crash the economy, leave food fallow in the fields, target vulnerable neighbors, and hurt the very population he claims to want to uplift—the American worker.”
- Rick Newman column in Yahoo Finance, “The economic risk of Trump’s deportation plan,” states, “Deporting large numbers of migrant workers will shrink the workforce, drive up labor costs, and make food and many other products more expensive. Growth will suffer a little, tax revenues will drop a bit, and budget deficits will be higher. If you think that’s all worth it, then explain the cost-benefit analysis and what the offsetting gain will be.”
Additional Resources
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- America’s Voice memo on mass deportation and its consequences
- America’s Voice press release, “Trump: “A Woman with Two Children, Three Children” Will Be Among Those He Wants to Target and Deport”
