The American Immigration Council recently published a new special report titled “Mass Deportation: Devastating Costs to America, Its Budget and Economy,” about the estimated economic and humanitarian costs of deporting more than 10 million undocumented immigrants. 

Please use this form to share the report with your elected officials.  

The report finds that an effort to arrest, detain, process, and remove one million undocumented immigrants per year would cost the U.S. government at least $88 billion per year, ultimately adding up to nearly one trillion dollars in taxpayer costs. Additionally, the report details how the U.S. economy would suffer if four percent of the workforce was deported. U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would drop anywhere from 4.2 percent to 6.8 percent. By comparison, the U.S. GDP shrank by 4.3 percent during the Great Recession between 2007 and 2009. 

Mass deportation would economically devastate millions of families. Undocumented immigrants often reside in mixed-status families and are relied on to make ends meet. Deporting undocumented immigrants would separate four million mixed-status families, affecting 8.5 million U.S. citizens with undocumented family members, including 5.1 million U.S. citizen children. On average, these families would see a yearly decrease of $51,200 in household income. 

For the cost of a mass deportation operation targeting one million people a year, the United States could build over 40,450 new elementary schools in communities around the nation, construct over 2.9 million new homes in communities around the nation, or even pay full tuition and expenses for over 8.9 million people to attend an in-state public college for four years. A single year of an operation that size would require the U.S. to spend 18 times more than the entire world spends each year on cancer research.   

No matter where your representatives stand on immigration and border issues, this report will make it clear to them that mass deportation would benefit no one, and harm everyone. 

Please use the form on this page to share the report with your elected officials.