The cost of Trump’s mass deportation plan: More than 10 times immigration’s budget and a possible recession

Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for U.S. president, has pledged to “the largest deportation operation in American history,” but has offered little details on how this plan will be carried out. Despite this, 54% of U.S. voters support this move. At rallies and interviews, the former president repeatedly insists — without proof — that while official figures put the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. at 11 million, he believes the number is closer to 15 or 20 million. He has also said that if he wins the November 5 election, he will begin deporting these people on Day 1 of his second mandate.

It is not clear how the Republican would implement this historic policy. Project 2025, the ultra-conservative blueprint for a hypothetical second Trump term, outlines some ideas. The image it paints is of a police state with massive internment camps along the border. But another important question remains unanswered: how much will all this cost?

The official Republican Party platform reads like any Trump campaign speech, offering 20 promises that sound more like slogans than policy points. The first two are capitalized: “Seal the border and stop the migrant invasion” and “carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.” Nothing more.

For Trump and his Republican supporters, it’s a solid plan because it would allegedly create jobs and get rid of “alien criminals.” While figures show that crime is down and that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native population, the former president maintains that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” a slogan that echoes rhetoric used by the Nazis.

“The largest deportation operation in history” would have a huge economic impact, both in terms of operational cost and its long-term economic repercussions. A 2015 study by the American Action Forum — a self-described “center-right” economic think tank — estimated that it would cost $18,214 to identify, detain, transport, process, hold, and ultimately expel each person. That works out to $24,094 today, adjusted for inflation. If there are an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the U.S., that brings the total to $265 billion.

But if Trump’s estimate of 20 million undocumented immigrants is taken, the cost would be around $481 billion. To put these figures into perspective, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — the immigration agency in charge of deporting migrants in the country illegally — and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) had a combined budget of nearly $30 billion in 2024.

The agency’s own data can also be used. In its 2023 report, ICE reported that it deported 142,580 “non-citizens” and spent more than $420 million, which works out to a cost of nearly $3,000 per person deported. Multiply that by 11 million people, and the cost of expelling the undocumented immigrants currently in the country comes to $33 billion. If the number of deportations were 20 million, the figure is nearly doubly. This figure only refers to the cost of deportation and does not take into account, as the previous calculation does, the cost of running a program to find immigrants, transport them to the border, and process them in internment camps, which would have to be built.

As Trump himself has said, to carry out the mass deportation operation, members of local police forces, the National Guard and even the military will need to be incorporated into the immigration efforts — a point also outlined in Project 2025. This is not allowed under current regulations, but if it were, it would entail an enormous cost that is difficult to estimate, meaning the estimated cost of the plan will be even higher.

What’s more, the cost of “the largest deportation operation in American history” involves more than the expense of carrying out the plan. It would also wreak havoc on the country’s economy: it would affect the labor market and wages first, and also impact GDP and inflation. Despite the difficulty of monitoring the labor market for undocumented people, the National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that there are 7.1 million undocumented migrant workers in the United States, representing 4.5% of the country’s workforce. If Trump expels them all, the most affected sectors would be construction, with 1.5 million fewer workers — which would raise the costs of building, increasing the already historically high cost of housing —; the hospitality industry, which would lose 1.1 million workers; the service sector, with another million employees lost; and manufacturing, which would lose 714,000.

Losing 4.5% of the country’s workforce would seriously impact the U.S. economy. It’s impossible to estimate the exact scale of the damage due to the number of variables at play, but a model called Okun’s Law — which charts the relationship between unemployment and GDP — suggests it would slow GDP growth by more than nine points. At the peak of the Great Recession in 2008, GDP growth fell by 4.3%. Okun’s model, however, is used on a smaller scale and can be much less accurate when it comes to mass deportations.

A smaller study that specifically focuses on deportations found that the plan would also result in job losses for U.S. citizens. One calculation derived from the study found that for every million workers expelled, 88,000 American jobs would be lost. If 7.1 million migrant workers were expelled, that would mean 968,000 citizens would lose their jobs as well.

But the impact of the plan does not end there. A mass deportation program could also reignite inflation. Labor costs account for, on average, about 60% of business expenses, and they rise when employers have to replace large numbers of workers. This was seen after restaurants, bars and hotels reopened after the Covid-19 pandemic. Companies facing significant labor shortages have three main options: pay more for overtime, pay more to hire new workers, or accept lower productivity. In all cases, the additional costs usually lead to higher prices. If seven million workers are lost, it could have a massive impact on inflation.

It’s not possible to predict the future, and when it comes to economics, the number of factors at play mean that estimates often miss the mark. But while Trump believes deporting 20 million undocumented immigrants will make the U.S. a better place, the data suggests the outcome would be much more somber.

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