“We see no evidence that employers increase wages to attract U.S.- born workers to fill these jobs in the face of immigration enforcement,” one study said
Donald Trump has his priorities — and it’s not any of the millions of Americans struggling to pay for daily living expenses, like rent and groceries. Nope. Instead, his priorities are clear: a vanity project ballroom, a proposed $1.7 billion slush fund for Jan. 6 insurrectionists, and, just this week, preparations are underway at the White House for UFC fight to celebrate his 80th birthday.
Yup, you read that right. When you may be trying to figure out if there’s any way to cut back on driving in order to survive these record-high gas prices, construction has reportedly begun on the White House lawn for a UFC ring to mark Trump’s June 14th birthday. “‘This will be the greatest show on Earth,’ Trump said from the Oval Office earlier this month as the UFC fighters set to participate in the bouts stood behind him,” The Independent reported. “Trump also showed off a nighttime rendering of what the fight will look like during the press briefing.”
Oh sure, it’s been marketed as another event from the upcoming United States Semiquincentennial, but were the Founding Fathers and their powdered wigs actually into mixed martial arts?
wake up babe the white house is a six flags
— Charlie Warzel (@cwarzel.bsky.social) 2026-05-26T15:52:54.315Z
Yes, it’s easy to just laugh off some of these Idiocracy-level shenanigans for the sake of our sanity, but in reality, his obsessions – namely, his mass deportations – are only hurting us all right in the wallet at a time when the workers who keep our nation running need help the most.
STRUGGLING FAMILIES WILL PAY THOUSANDS MORE UNDER TRUMP’S ANTI-IMMIGRANT AGENDA
Working families should expect to be paying “an additional $2,150 for goods and services each year by the end of 2028, or the equivalent of the average American family’s grocery bill for three months or their combined electricity and gas bills for the entire year,” FWD.us said in a May 20 economic report. “Everyday and essential goods and services most Americans frequently purchase would experience some of the highest increases,” with weekly grocery prices projected to rise from $165 weekly to nearly $200 by the end of 2028.
These price increases – which also factor in the administration’s ongoing attempts to block visas and also strip status from legal immigrants in addition to mass deportation raids that have brutalized communities across the country – are enough to wipe out hard-fought savings that Americans may painstakingly accumulate annually.
“Unlike past periods of inflation, Americans have not been saving at the same rate as earlier years, and cannot absorb these price increases as easily, squeezing their budgets even further,” FWD.us notes. “These costs are above and beyond the impacts of other economic policies like global tariffs that will also raise prices.” In another example, Consumer Affairs reported that 61% of Americans of survey respondents said that “higher food prices are driving them to prioritize backyard growing, including 69% of Gen X and 61% of Gen Z.”
DON’T BELIEVE THE LIES – MASS DEPORTATION HURTS U.S.-BORN WORKERS TOO
The administration has continued to insist that its mass deportation agenda is a boon to U.S.-born workers by increasing job openings and raising wages, but reality is not on its side. See the recent National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study finding that for every six undocumented workers who lose jobs to mass deportation, one U.S.-born worker with a high school degree or less also loses their job.
Researchers from this “first causal, national empirical analysis of the labor market impacts of heightened immigration enforcement during the second Trump administration” say no positive benefits were seen when it comes to wages, either. “Instead, work slowed,” The New York Times reported in its analysis of the data. “Construction companies view it as easier to reduce production, reduce the construction of new homes and new buildings in general, rather than try to increase wages for U.S.-born workers,” Chloe East, study author and economics professor at Boulder’s University of Colorado told the outlet.
“We see no evidence that employers increase wages to attract U.S.- born workers to fill these jobs in the face of immigration enforcement,” researchers said in their study. “Instead, our results are consistent with employers reducing labor demand overall, including for jobs more often taken by U.S.-born workers.”
MASS DEPORTATION COSTS US AS A NATION
Nativism costs us all, no matter the job or legal status, with recent UPenn research documenting that ICE raids reduce weekly foot traffic by 2.7% and weekly spending by 6.2%. Cumulatively, this is an economic sledgehammer, totaling “8.1 billion fewer visits and $3-14 billion in foregone spending in a single year,” the study said. “Effects intensify near raid sites, do not dissipate over time and are remarkably general: declines occur regardless of neighborhood demography, affect workplaces and consumer-facing stores across myriad industries, and trigger no substitution to online shopping. The breadth of the local economic damage mirrors the breadth of the enforcement approach.”
We also have long known that immigrants, regardless of legal status, pay billions in local, state, and federal taxes annually. So it should come at no surprise that our nation can kiss those contributions goodbye under mass deportation, with some tax preparers noting that some immigrant community members are too terrified to file returns, The Guardian reports. “Our target is the Latino community, and many people didn’t file taxes because of fear of ICE,” one tax adviser said. “They said: ‘If they can deport me, what am I filing taxes for?’”
“Experts believe that a drop in tax filings could cost the federal government billions of dollars in lost revenue,” The Guardian reported. “According to Yale’s Budget Lab, the losses could range from $147bn to $479bn over the next 10 years. At the same time, up to 2.7 million children who are US citizens or lawful permanent residents might lose access to the credit due to these policy changes.”
LAWMAKERS SHOULDN’T KEEP FUNDING AMERICA’S ECONOMIC DECLINE
This loss of billions comes as Congress continues to debate giving mass deportation agencies another $70 billion on top of the $170 billion they already got last year. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to figure out that additional funding – and with no strings attached – will only pour more gasoline on the human and economic fallout from mass deportation. Lawmakers should be funding families rather than funding to separate them.
“The economic results of the administration’s immigration policies have really not worked out as planned,” as Stuart Anderson, Executive Director of the National Foundation for American Policy, said on a recent press call hosted by America’s Voice. “We’ve seen nearly 2 million fewer foreign-born workers than were projected by the Congressional Budget Office and the Social Security Administration. Economic growth is made up of labor force growth and productivity growth, and immigrants are crucial to both. The more successful ICE agents and administration officials are in reducing the U.S. labor supply, the worse the economic results for Americans.”
