Online tool from America’s Voice exposes the devastating consequences of Trump’s anti-immigrant obsession
Donald Trump’s obsession with mass purging millions of immigrant families and contributors from their homes and workplaces is coming at high economic and human costs to the country, as documented in a new “Trump’s America” map from America’s Voice. In just these first chaotic 100 days alone, the cruelty and costs have already been staggering.
In Arizona, U.S. citizen Jose Hermosillo was wrongfully detained for ten days after he got lost and asked a Border Patrol agent for help. While Hermosillo tried to explain that he was an American, he was ignored. “They say, tell your lawyer,” he said. In Vermont, Palestinian Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi was abducted by agents as he was summoned to take what he thought was going to be his final U.S. citizenship exam. He was finally released from ICE custody on April 30, but only because of a federal judge’s order. “The two weeks of detention so far demonstrate great harm to a person who has been charged with no crime,” the judge said. “Mr. Mahdawi, I will order you released.”
And in one of the most horrific incidents to emerge out of these first 100 days, ICE expelled three U.S. citizen children with their families – including one four-year-old child with stage four cancer.
“Legal counsel for the two Louisiana families tells Rolling Stone that both mothers say they were not given the option of keeping their U.S. citizen children in the country,” the outlet reported. “They say the mothers were told their children were being deported alongside them, despite their citizenship status and even though both families had lawful custodians willing to take custody of the children.” Nor is this even the first time that the Trump administration has exiled a sick U.S. citizen child. Last month, the administration removed a U.S. citizen child who was recovering from brain cancer to Mexico with her family, NBC News reported.
Click below to see a growing list of these devastating consequences by state:
Trump’s obsessions are also leading to economic turmoil, by purging workers from essential industries including agriculture and construction, which only exacerbates existing labor shortages and raises living costs for all working families. Dairy leaders in South Dakota, for example, are worried that Trump’s agenda will threaten their workforce. “The National Milk Producers Federation, which represents South Dakota’s dairy producers, states that ‘dairy farms will not be able to survive, let alone thrive, without a steady, reliable workforce,’ and notes that more than half of all U.S. dairy labor is immigrant labor, according to its 2025 labor and immigration policy statement,” Northern Plains News reported.
In a major blow to the tourism industry, potential visitors are cancelling plans to travel to the U.S. due to the often-barbaric treatment of travelers from around the world. “Visiting Hawaii has been on my bucket list for over 40 years, one prospective visitor said according to Beat of Hawaii. “It no longer is.” Tourism Economics is projecting a $9 billion loss in tourism spending as a result of Trump’s obsession.
In Texas, mass deportations could “possibly paralyze the construction industry or at least slow it down tremendously,” said Shannon Bow O’Brien, a presidential scholar at the University of Texas at Austin. In areas like the southwest, entire construction work crews are immigrants. “It also is going to have a lot of impact on a lot of the agricultural industry,” Bow O’Brien continued. In New Jersey, the seafood industry is a major contributor to the state’s economy. But in the first days of the second Trump administration, federal agents also disrupted a Newark seafood store’s daily operations to detain a Puerto Rican U.S. military veteran, highlighting the risks that Trump’s mass deportation obsessions pose to U.S. citizens and legal residents as well.
“He is Puerto Rican and the manager of our warehouse,” the New Jersey business owner said. “It looked to me like they were specifically going after certain kinds of people — not every kind, because they did not ask me for documentation for my American workers, Portuguese workers, or white workers.”
As “Trump’s America” map shows, these human and economic costs are playing out all over the country. Trump’s obsessions are not only cruel, but disrupt our economy, raise prices of groceries, health care, and housing, and make all of us less safe. We must be better than this.
