Washington, DC – A wave of new reporting from across the country this week confirms the findings of America’s Voice’s new report, “End the ICE Tax,”: Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s mass deportation agenda is not just cruel and chaotic but Americans are paying a steep economic price as well. From Richmond to Nashville to Kansas City, local outlets are putting a price tag on the deportation machine, block by block and paycheck by paycheck.
Local reporting is outlining the same story everywhere: billions in taxpayer costs, thousands of lost jobs, and industries from homebuilding to home health care straining under the weight of an agenda that promised to lower costs for Americans.
- From Tennessee to Virginia, Taxpayers Are Footing the Bill: A new Economic Policy Institute calculator shows just how widely the cost is spreading. Axios reports that Virginia taxpayers could pay an estimated $7.4 billion toward Trump’s mass deportation push, about $2,400 per taxpayer, enough in the Richmond area alone to cover Medicaid for nearly 25,800 people. Meanwhile, Tennessee taxpayers are paying about $1,961 each, nearly $4.5 billion statewide.
- Fresno Shows How Dependent the Country Already Is on Foreign Farm Labor: The Sacramento Bee reports that the Fresno metro area ranks fourth in the nation for reliance on seasonal foreign farmworkers, requesting 2,574 seasonal foreign workers this past year, most through the H-2A agricultural visa program. The finding lands as the Trump administration moves to end Temporary Protected Status for several immigrant groups, even as employers nationwide warn they cannot find enough workers without them.
- Texas Is Paying a Price Too: Houston Chronicle columnist Chris Tomlinson opens his column by naming Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the Houston construction worker killed by an ICE agent in July, as one of the migrant workers who has long driven the Texas economy. Texas job growth has slowed from an average of 2 percent a year to just 0.01 percent in 2025, and the administration’s termination of Temporary Protected Status, paired with its slow-walking of DACA renewals, threatens roughly 241,000 legal workers in Texas alone.
- Kansas City Has Already Lost Thousands of Jobs: KCUR and The Beacon report that Kansas City has already lost thousands of jobs to the deportation crackdown. According to Brookings Institution research, the two Kansas Citys lost an estimated 7,986 jobs due to a 93 percent increase in immigration arrests, while Wichita lost 2,240 jobs after enforcement there surged 360 percent. Brookings found that these surges cost cities jobs held by American-born workers as well as immigrants.
- Home Builders Say ICE Is Fueling the Very Housing Crisis Trump Blames on Immigrants: The Bulwark reports that home builders say ICE enforcement is devastating their industry, even as Vice President JD Vance continues blaming immigrants for high housing costs. New-home prices rose sharply in the regions most dependent on immigrant construction labor, the Northeast and the West.
- Even the National Jobs Numbers Point the Same Direction: July’s employment report showed the economy actually lost jobs, and economist Paul Krugman writes that Trump’s immigration crackdown, layered on top of retiring Baby Boomers, has produced what he calls the “Trump Stall,” a slowdown in job creation with no clear end in sight. The Hill makes a similar point, noting that the labor force is shrinking even as the unemployment rate ticks down, a sign of a smaller economy rather than a healthier one. Removing immigrant workers, Krugman notes, will leave everyone else poorer and with a lower quality of life.
The mass deportation machine is raising costs for American families at the grocery store, at the job site, and on every taxpayer’s bill.
Joanna Kuebler, Chief of Programs for America’s Voice issued the following statement:
“The numbers do not lie; in fact, they reveal a deep truth about mass deportation: Americans are paying a steep price for groceries, healthcare and housing due to the ravages of mass deportation. Trump promised to bring down costs for American families. Instead, he and Stephen Miller are handing Americans a bill they never agreed to pay. We call it the ‘ICE tax,’ and recent headlines prove it is real. Taxpayers across the country are each being asked to hand over thousands of dollars to fund a deportation machine that is simultaneously wiping out jobs and driving up home prices for American families. This is the predictable result of a destructive, deliberate policy choice by this administration and their Congress allies. There is a better way than to keep funding this cruelty and this chaos. Congress could step in and choose instead to end the ICE tax and give American families the relief they were actually promised.”
Read the America’s Voice report: “End the ICE Tax: How the Mass Deportation Agenda Impacts Americans Every Day as It Raises Prices, Slows Key Industries, and Drains Local Economies”
