Washington, DC — On a virtual event hosted today by America’s Voice, leading experts and advocates gathered to discuss the harms for our economy, public safety, and families and communities should the immigration portions of the budget reconciliation bill pass intact. The discussion took place as Congress debates and prepares to vote on the budget reconciliation bill, including more than $70 billion to fund immigration enforcement agencies for the remainder of the Trump presidency – tens of billions of new money for mass deportation without accountability and on top of the $170 billion for immigration enforcement passed just last year.
Greg Chen, Senior Director of Government Relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), stated: “Congress should not be handing ICE and CBP $70 billion in additional funding that lasts multiple years to 2029 with no oversight and no guardrails to stop their unlawful and unconstitutional abuses. Americans want safe communities and gas, food and basic needs to be affordable – not dangerous and lawless abuses by ICE. In recent days ICE has violated a court order barring their actions in courthouses, and detained and harmed more U.S. citizens; and an ICE agent was just charged by MN prosecutors for shooting a man through the door of his house and then falsely claiming it was in self defense.”
Stuart Anderson, Executive Director of the National Foundation for American Policy and a leading expert on the economic impact of immigration policy, stated: “The economic results of the administration’s immigration policies have really not worked out as planned. 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.”
Deborah Fleischaker, former acting ICE Chief of Staff, said: “We need smart, effective immigration enforcement. The question isn’t whether the government should enforce the law — it should. The question is whether Congress should pour tens of billions of additional dollars into enforcement agencies that are already operating with historically large budgets, too little accountability, and little willingness to implement common sense guardrails. Before Congress writes another blank check, lawmakers should ask a basic question: What problem are they actually solving?”
Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice, stated: “Mass deportation makes us poorer, weaker and less safe and this administration is planning to scale up these harms to even greater levels through the tens of billions of new funding. Congress, including Republican co-sponsors of the Dignity Act, will have to decide if their legacy will be delivering even more cruelty, chaos and economic harm or listening to the majority of Americans who are calling for accountability and reform and an alternative vision.”
Recently, leading researchers and media observers have been highlighting the economic harms already associated with mass deportation – harms that threaten to scale up should the additional immigration enforcement funding move forward. Among the key attention includes:
- New York Times: “Trump’s Deportations Are Costing Americans Jobs”
- Washington Post Editorial: “The Unintended Consequences of Mass Deportations”
- Forbes column by Stuart Anderson: “New Research Finds ICE Immigration Raids Harm the Economy”
- The Guardian, “Trump’s immigration crackdown could cost up to $479bn in lost taxes over 10 years”
- Bloomberg, “US Immigration Crackdown Hurts Some American Workers, Study Says”
To access a recording of today’s virtual event, click HERE
