US economy faces reckoning as some immigrants avoid workplaces

Ten days after raids by federal immigration officials in Los Angeles set off a national protest movement, a Hispanic woman walks through the city’s Canoga Park neighborhood. She says she won’t give her name for concern that she might risk trouble for herself or others.

In fact, she won’t say much. But the quiet streets evoke a broader phenomenon sweeping the United States.

“Right now, we’re hiding,” she says, noting that she’s a legal resident in a community where many others do not have government permission to live and work. “We don’t want to stand out.”

As President Donald Trump pursues his promised mass deportation campaign, worksite arrests in both rural areas and big cities are raising questions around the future of the U.S. workforce and its economy, long reliant on immigrants both in and out of lawful status. In one of its latest crackdowns, federal agents said they had arrested 84 unauthorized immigrants on June 17 at the Delta Downs Racetrack near Vinton, Louisiana.

While continuing to target Democratic-led cities, Mr. Trump has also noted that his immigration tactics are “taking very good, longtime workers away” from the farm, hotel, and leisure sectors. It’s unclear what effect, if any, the immigration crackdown has had so far on economic indicators.

But while the impact of President Trump’s deportation sweep may take time to register, uncertainty caused by policy shifts, muscular arrests, and deportations is already taking a toll.

In a series of switchbacks over the past week, the Trump administration first announced ramped-up arrests of unauthorized immigrants, then after some back-and-forth, it told Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to pause arrests at farms, hotels, and restaurants, reported The New York Times. On Sunday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins posted on X that she fully supports “deportations of EVERY illegal alien.”

Reversals on reversals

As of this week, the Trump administration has reportedly reversed prior orders to spare farms and other businesses from raids. All this comes as the administration is pushing “self-deportation” and making arrests at sensitive sites like immigration courts.

Worksite raids aren’t new. And even if the administration’s reported goal of 3,000 arrests a day were reached – and those arrests became deportations – the country would fall far short of removing all of America’s estimated 13.7 million unauthorized immigrants in four years.

There were more than 8 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. workforce as of 2022, according to the Pew Research Center. More than one-quarter of those are in the construction and agriculture industries. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimated that unauthorized workers paid $96.7 billion in taxes in 2022, including $19.5 billion in federal income tax. (The total that all Americans paid in federal income taxes in 2022 was $2.1 trillion.)

Last year, unauthorized immigrants paid about $24 billion in Social Security taxes, despite being ineligible for benefits, according to a study published this week by the Penn Wharton Budget Model. If continued over the next 10 years, the Trump deportation policy would raise Social Security program deficits by $133 billion; over 30 years, by $884 billion, the study said.