Experts dispute White House claims mass deportations improve Americans’ lives

Among the statements and briefings released by the White House in January was an article titled, “Mass Deportations Are Improving Americans’ Quality of Life.”

Mass deportations, it said, equal lower housing costs, higher wages, more jobs and lower crime.

It’s a striking assessment — a bold assertion declared in the midst of both widespread unrest and violent encounters surrounding the Trump administration’s boosted immigration enforcement actions nationwide.

After almost a year of escalated and escalating deportations, which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimates to involve nearly 3 million persons — the claim is based on 2.2 million self-deportations and 675,000 deportations — are U.S. citizens, as the White House statement declares, indeed better off according to the data?

Regional economic indicators are beginning to point to a different conclusion.

On Feb. 9, The Wall Street Journal reported that in the Texas Rio Grande Valley, “trade groups are raising alarms about aggressive immigration enforcement wreaking economic havoc. Construction delays threaten higher prices for buyers and lower margins for builders. Some builders said they just hope to break even on delayed projects. Materials suppliers are laying off employees. One local concrete company filed for bankruptcy protection, citing a drop-off in sales because of immigration raids as the reason.”

The Guardian informed its readers Feb. 10 that in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, “bustling neighborhoods have turned into ghost towns. Some small businesses have temporarily closed with no signs of reopening. Businesses that stay open keep their doors locked, to prevent (ICE) agents from entering without a warrant. Many restaurants are doing takeout only.”

A DHS spokesperson said no correlation exists between immigration enforcement efforts and business issues.

And the positive data cited by the White House?

“As any qualified statistician will tell you, correlation and causation are not the same thing,” observed David Spicer, director of policy and engagement in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Migration.

“It’s easy enough to take two distinct data points and make an argument that they are somehow interconnected, but further analysis should always be done before drawing a conclusion,” he explained. “And of course, when it comes to immigration, there is always a great deal of nuance and complexity — however much political actors may try to boil the issue down to pithy talking points.”

Spicer was not alone in his evaluation of the White House figures.

“They don’t explain how removing immigrants has achieved this result,” said J. Kevin Appleby, senior fellow for policy and communications at the nonpartisan, New York City-based Center for Migration Studies.

“They just put in certain statistics based on certain cities, and they draw the conclusion that because we’ve deported a certain number of immigrants, therefore, these economic indicators are improving,” he added. “And there’s no proof to draw that conclusion.”

Stan Veuger, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank in Washington, agreed.

“One way in which you can tell that people’s quality of life is not improved … is just the massive negative response from the communities in which they are detaining, arresting, and deporting people,” Veuger said. “I think that’s a pretty clear indicator.”

Protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, have been staged in at least 40 American cities, including Chicago, Denver, New York, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, where two demonstrators were shot and killed by ICE officers in separate incidents.

The Manhattan Institute, a New York-based conservative think tank founded in 1978, declined to comment. The group produced a 2025 report arguing the government would save billions through mass deportation of immigrants not in the U.S. lawfully, but its projections showed the U.S. economy taking a significant economic hit in the near term that would only subside after 30 years. Its scenario for mass deportation of 10 million immigrants predicted the U.S. would see a nearly $1.5 trillion loss to the nation’s gross domestic product, a 1.5 percent reduction of its economic output. While the government would save $633 billion in spending, the U.S. national debt, as a percentage of GDP, would increase 2 percent.

Numerous American bishops have collectively and individually stated their concerns regarding the nature of immigration enforcement taking place and mass deportation.

A new survey released Feb. 9 by the Pew Research Center noted approval of Trump’s agenda is down among most religious groups compared to a year ago. Among Catholics, the survey found 46 percent of white Catholics said they support all or most of Trump’s policies, down from 51 percent who said the same in February 2025. Among Hispanic Catholics, just 18 percent said they support all or most of Trump’s policies, down from 20 percent the previous year.

The White House maintains, “Through mass deportations, the Trump Administration is freeing up resources, revitalizing opportunity, and restoring safety.”

Still, Spicer, Appleby and Veuger said the administration’s statistics do not necessarily support that conclusion.

As to lower housing costs, Spicer said, “There is no credible data that points to immigration, undocumented or otherwise, as a leading cause of our country’s housing affordability crisis.”

While the National Association of Realtors praised Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order challenging dominance of institutional investors and their role in the single-family housing market, the NAR’s Jan. 22 statement made no mention of immigration with regard to costs or availability.

“There is a broad sense in which immigration policy does put a bit of downward pressure on housing,” said Veuger, “which is simply that the net migration numbers are much lower than in recent years. But that’s mostly driven by a reduction in inflows, not so much by an increase in deportations.”

Higher wages and jobs are seemingly not apparent from the White House statistics, either.

“Maybe the indicator that speaks for itself the most is the unemployment rate,” suggested Veuger, “which has gone up for native-born Americans. That’s not what you would expect if the labor markets had actually tightened for them.”

On Jan. 11, Forbes Magazine reported, “Government data show the Trump administration’s immigration policies reducing the number of foreign-born workers did not help U.S.-born workers in 2025.”

Spicer said that’s not surprising.

“The vast majority of studies conducted over recent decades … have found very little, if any, adverse impact on wages for the average American worker as a result of immigration,” he explained. “On the other hand, our current food supply chains and other important industries rely heavily on the labor of immigrants.”

On Jan. 27, the U.S. Census Bureau released data indicating the U.S. population grew at one of the slowest rates in its history between June 30, 2024, and July 1, 2025, with immigration numbers plunging by more than 50 percent from the previous year.

“What you may have is short-run impact in specific sectors,” Veuger said. “(The White House) highlights truckers and construction. I think the empirical evidence they present is extremely weak — it’s a link to a newspaper article where they ask some guy, but it’s not an econometric study about wages.”

On Oct. 31, 2025, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis website published an article noting, “Median real wages in 2025 are growing at close to half the rate of 2023 and 2024 (1.7 times slower growth). This is more pronounced for low-wage workers (2.5 times slower), who might be expected to benefit the most from less competition from unauthorized workers.”

“There’s been modest job growth,” noted Appleby, “but not to the extent that we’ve seen a boom. You can’t attribute that to foreign-born workers being removed.”

“Immigrants occupy a lot of jobs that Americans don’t want, or don’t perform in some way. And by removing them, it generally hurts the economy; it doesn’t help,” he explained. “If you remove agricultural workers, if you remove construction workers, if you remove hospitality workers, the cost of labor is going to go up. So therefore, prices are going to go up.”

Broad claims linking mass deportations to lower crime also merit caution, said Spicer.

“There are immigrants who have committed or intend to commit crimes in our country, and they should face justice under the law,” he said. “However, when the vast majority of immigrants are upstanding members of our communities and statistically commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born persons, extrapolating isolated data points to make national conclusions can easily become a basis for unjust discrimination and harmful policy decisions.”

A 2024 study funded by the National Institute of Justice — the research, development, and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice — examined data from the Texas Department of Public Safety to estimate the arrest rate of unauthorized immigrants. The study found these immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes, and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.

Veuger said crime has been on the decline since the spike started during the first Trump administration, and that the White House statement makes unwarranted connections.

“Specifically, they say in D.C., homicides are down 60%,” he commented. “It’s true — but of course has nothing to do with the deportations, or with the immigration policy more broadly. In D.C., 90-plus percent of the homicides are committed by and victimized native-born African- Americans. There’s just no link with immigration policy there.”

In a Jan. 22 press release, the independent Council on Criminal Justice stated, “While the downward trajectory of crime is clear, the reasons behind it are less certain. Researchers and practitioners have pointed to a range of possible contributors, including changes in criminal justice policy and practice, shifts in routine activities and social behavior, economic conditions, technology use, and local violence prevention efforts.”

A survey released in early February by the Major Cities Chiefs Association — compiling statistics from 67 of 68 responding law enforcement agencies — notes major U.S. cities overall experienced a steep drop in violent crime last year.

Ultimately, Appleby feels a policy compromise on immigration will be necessary.

“We rely on undocumented labor to help keep the economic engine humming. And it’s sort of the big lie here. The whole immigration system — undocumented immigration — we’re dependent on in a lot of ways,” he emphasized.

“What the Church has said for years is that you can’t have it both ways,” Appleby added, underscoring that the U.S. Catholic bishops have called for comprehensive and just immigration reform since before the first Trump administration. “You can’t demonize these people; you can’t separate their families; you can’t remove them unjustly — but still benefit from their sweat equity, from their taxes and from their economic contributions.”

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