On February 5, 2025, a military plane from the US state of Texas landed in Amritsar, Punjab, carrying more than 100 undocumented immigrants back to their homeland. It seems Trump wasn’t kidding when he promised a mass deportation of illegal immigrants living on American soil. Or, as he put it, “the largest deportation effort in American history.”

This is just the beginning. US immigration officials plan to soon deport about 20,000 illegal immigrants. Additionally, children born to undocumented immigrants in the US will no longer receive automatic citizenship.

The US has signed agreements with several South American countries, including El Salvador, Venezuela, and Colombia, to take back deported immigrants.

At this point, you might be thinking, “Well, that’s fair.” People who enter a country without proper permits and immigration documents are bound to be deported.”

But Trump isn’t just focused on legality; he frames the deportations as a crackdown on crime by targeting immigrants with criminal records; it’s a way of saying that it’s time to clean up American society. It also frames illegal immigration as a drain on resources and jobs available to Americans, and presents deportation as a magic bullet that will fix everything.

So let’s look at each claim independently.

Claim 1: Illegal immigration is a huge drain on resources and jobs.

This is undoubtedly true. Any form of immigration will create some drain on resources. For example, New York City alone reports that it has spent or expects to spend $12 billion on housing, food, health care, and other services for recently arrived illegal immigrants over the next three years. To cover these costs, it expects to cut budgets for services like public education and the police department. In addition, in many states in the U.S., illegal immigrants are also eligible for welfare programs.

These are government-sponsored assistance programs for individuals and families in need, including programs like food stamps, Medicaid, and unemployment compensation. As you can see, illegal immigrants are often more dependent on welfare programs.

Finally, while illegal immigrants contribute to the economy in countless ways (which we will discuss soon), the net financial impact of illegal immigrants over their lifetimes is only positive if they have a college degree. If they don’t have a degree (which is generally the case for most immigrants), they can cost the American economy more than $50,000 over their lifetimes.

That’s too expensive!

Claim 2: They take jobs and increase crime

On the jobs front, the data is less clear. As illegal immigrants become active participants in the economy, they appear to provide some long-term benefits for the labor market. But in the short term, this may come at the expense of native-born workers. For example, one famous study found that when large numbers of immigrants enter a particular skill group (like construction workers or factory workers), wages for that group tend to fall. This is because more people are competing for the same jobs.

The only problem is that this relationship breaks down over longer periods of time. So it’s a bit murky.

However, the data on crime is much stronger. While there are some studies that suggest that there may be an increase in certain crimes in certain border areas (such as smuggling or minor crimes related to illegal entry), it appears that there is no strong link between illegal immigration and crime.

So, despite what Trump would like the American people to believe, these are the hard, cold facts.

Okay, so these are the problems with illegal immigration.

Now, let’s look at what happens when illegal immigrants, whatever they are, enter the United States, stay there for an extended period of time, and contribute to the American economy.

To start, illegal immigrants are not just passive recipients of benefits; they are active contributors. Agriculture, construction, manufacturing, hospitality, nursing, and food service are all heavily dependent on immigrant labor. These jobs are physically demanding and pay less, and many Americans don’t want them. Employers also benefit from hiring undocumented workers because they can pay lower wages and don’t have to offer benefits like health insurance or retirement plans.

The surprising truth is that these illegal aliens make up almost 5% of the U.S. workforce; undocumented households have a combined income of $330 billion and pay almost $100 billion in taxes.

If all these immigrants were suddenly deported to their home countries, it would not only create a labor shortage in the U.S., but it would also reduce billions of dollars in taxes paid to the U.S. government. The economy could shrink by as much as 6.8%, according to the American Immigration Council, a blow nearly as bad as what happened during the Great Recession.

So, despite all this talk about the importance of immigration, why hasn’t the US simply fixed its policies?

Because immigration reform is caught in a political battle. It’s a very polarized issue among voters. Politicians don’t want to take a strong stance for fear of losing support. So while every administration talks about fixing immigration, meaningful reforms remain elusive.

And despite his aggressive stance on immigration, Trump’s first-term deportations are 3.13 million, slightly below Obama’s 3.16 million. Meanwhile, under Joe Biden, the number of deportations has risen to 4.44 million in just two years (2021 and 2022).

So yes, while leaders portray immigration as a crisis, their actions don’t always match their words.

Back to the point, even if Trump implements his plan, there’s a big problem: the cost, because mass deportations are both a logistical and financial nightmare.

By 2024, the average cost of deporting a single person has risen from $10,070 in 2015 to nearly $14,000. That means the cost of deporting 11 million people (under Trump’s ambitious deportation plan) would exceed $150 billion. In addition, detention facilities cost thousands of dollars per bed. If the government ramps up these efforts, mass deportations could become an economic problem for the U.S. itself.

What about Americans? What do they support? According to the Pew Research Center, more than 60% of those polled believe that illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay under certain conditions. That’s because mass deportations don’t just affect immigrants; they also affect U.S. businesses, tax revenues, and communities. And that’s something Trump should think twice about.