The Dictatorship
Trump sold mass deportations as an economic bonanza. Here’s the truth.
In a recent CBS News interview, incoming “border czar” Tom Homan was confronted with the question of whether the benefits of mass-deporting millions of undocumented immigrants were worth the cost. He responded with a question of his own, “What price do you put on national security?”
It’s a question that Americans might be asking pretty soon themselves. Is the price of deporting millions of undocumented immigrants worth the cost?
Undocumented immigrants are far less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, President-elect Donald Trump described crackdowns on illegal immigration as an essential tool for reducing crime, increasing employment and even lowering housing costs. Never mind that undocumented immigrants are far less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans and that the threat to national security from their presence in the country is minimal at best.
What was omitted from Trump’s anti-immigrant diatribes were the significant economic costs of deporting millions of undocumented immigrants — and the meager benefits.
According to one estimate from the pro-immigration advocacy group American Immigration Council, arresting, detaining and deporting the 13.3 million people who are either in the United States illegally — or are in the country temporarily without legal status — could cost $315 billion.
Trump campaign officials have said they don’t intend to deport every undocumented immigrant in the country immediately. Considering that the U.S. has never deported more than a half-million people in a single year, it would likely be impossible.
However, even deporting 1 million people yearly could cost nearly $90 billion. Apprehending immigrants, detaining them, court procedures and transporting them out of the country makes mass deportation a complicated and costly endeavor. Indeed, the estimated cost of deporting a single undocumented immigrant is estimated to run as high as $13,000.
Trump has said as recently as this week that he wants to enlist the military in his mass deportation plans, but that is easier said than done. Trump will have to jump through various legal hoops to overcome the impediments to using the uniformed military for domestic law enforcement. To achieve his anti-immigration goals, Trump will likely need Congress to authorize billions of dollars in new spending and hire tens of thousands of new government employees.
Let’s suppose, for a moment, that Trump is actually successful at getting the mass deportation project off the ground. In Trump’s words, there can be “no price tag” on such an effort. In reality, there is a price — and it will quickly be felt by American consumers.
To achieve his anti-immigration goals, Trump will likely need Congress to authorize billions of dollars in new spending.
Today, undocumented immigrants represent 5% of the U.S. workforce, and because two-thirds of them are between the ages of 25 and 54 (compared to less than 40% of the U.S.-born population), they are overrepresented in the workforce.
Many undocumented immigrants take on dangerous, menial and low-paying jobs. They are maids and housekeepers, construction laborers and agricultural workers. Indeed, a whopping 45 percent of agricultural workers are undocumented along with 15 percent of construction workers.
If millions of undocumented immigrants are forced to leave the country, these industries will bear the brunt — as will consumers.
Even if they aren’t deported, fear of getting caught up in workplace raids might push some of the undocumented to no longer show up for work. Either way, farms, construction companies and restaurants may find themselves short-staffed and unable to bring on new workers at a time of low unemployment.
Whatever the case, the labor disruptions will almost certainly lead to higher prices on everything from food to housing. And working class Americans — many of whom voted for Trump — will get hit the hardest.
Moreover, if restaurants are losing cooks and busboys and construction companies can’t find laborers, other native-born Americans such as waiters, construction managers, and architects will be directly affected as businesses shut down or take on fewer projects.
In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Trump said, “Americans are being squeezed out of the labor force, and their jobs are taken.” That’s not really true, since the undocumented often take on jobs that most native-born Americans simply don’t want. If Trump is successful at deporting millions of undocumented workers, his words will be prophetic; tens of thousands of Americans may soon find themselves out of work.
There are other indirect costs that many Americans who voted for mass deportation probably didn’t consider. For example, many undocumented immigrants work in child care. If they are forced to leave the country, the number of women in the labor force could decrease.
Then there are the tax implications. In 2022, undocumented immigrants paid close to $50 billion in federal taxes and nearly $30 billion in state taxes. They also contributed more than $28 billion to Social Security and Medicare (even though they don’t benefit from those programs).
Migrants are also consumers. Removing them from the country means decreased spending, further undermining the economy.
By nearly any appreciable measure, immigration to the United States is a net economic positive, contributing to higher growth, greater productivity and even a reduced budget deficit.
Conversely, mass deportations will almost certainly lead to slower economic growth, increased unemployment and, ironically, higher inflation.
While the economic costs of mass deportation are significant, we cannot ignore the moral and humanitarian costs. Millions of undocumented Americans have native-born American children.
Migrants are also consumers. Removing them from the country means decreased spending, further undermining the economy.
Are Americans prepared to, again, watch parents ripped away from their children simply to fulfill Trump’s campaign promise? There are undocumented immigrants in practically every community in America. They are neighbors, friends, little league dads and soccer moms. Will Americans who voted for Trump be as blasé about the impact of mass deportation when it directly affects those they know personally?
Mass deportation might be popular on the campaign trail but in practice it is a recipe for an immediate and significant political backlash.
As much as many Trump voters say they wanted mass deportation, few seemed to understand or appreciate the ultimate consequences.
In short measure, they’re about to find out.
Michael A. Cohen is a columnist for BLN and a Senior Fellow and co-director of the Afghanistan Assumptions Project at the Center for Strategic Studies at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. He writes the political newsletter Truth and Consequences. He has been a columnist at The Boston Globe, The Guardian and Foreign Policy, and he is the author of three books, the most recent being“Clear and Present Safety: The World Has Never Been Better and Why That Matters to Americans.”
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. The Supreme Court these days is generally in the business of helping executions go forward. But on Thursday night, the court did something notable: It told Alabama no.
Even then, the court wasn’t unanimous. Justices Clarence ThomasSamuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the refusal to let the nitrogen gas execution of Jeffery Lee proceed.
What prompted the rare rejection? In line with the typical shadow docket practice, the court didn’t explain itself. Nor did the dissenters, who merely noted their disagreement.
But a deeper look at the case helps us understand why a majority of the court was unwilling to help the state this time.
A Trump-appointed judge had permanently blocked Alabama from killing Lee using the nitrogen method, due to the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. In her ruling Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Emily Marks made it clear that she wasn’t stopping officials from executing Lee for the 1998 murders of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson. Rather, she was only barring the nitrogen method while leaving the state free to use others, such as a firing squad.
Yet the state still pressed to execute Lee with nitrogen on Thursday. The next roadblock it hit was a divided appellate panel, which declined to lift Marks’ injunction. Trump-appointed Judge Robert Luck dissented, stressing the high bar the justices have set for Eighth Amendment claims and accusing Lee of delaying his claim until the last minute. Luck noted that Lee’s victims didn’t get to choose how they died.
The appellate dissent reflects the Supreme Court majority’s view on capital punishment. So, when Alabama filed an emergency application to the justices on Thursday, it felt like the setting of a familiar scene: A lower court halts an execution, only for the high court majority to let it move forward. We have seen this movie before.
Plus, the court previously permitted nitrogen gas executions in Alabama. In the case of Anthony Boyd last yearJustice Sonia Sotomayor lamented the majority’s refusal to extend him what she called “the barest form of mercy,” which she said would have been letting him die by firing squad, which “would kill him in seconds, rather than by a torturous suffocation lasting up to 4 minutes.” She issued a similar dissent the year before in the case of Kenneth Smithwhich she concluded “with deep sadness, but commitment to the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment.”
Lee’s case was different, as his lawyers and a key outside advocate explained to the justices. His lawyers said it was “unlike every previous method of execution challenge that this Court has considered.” They said that unlike prior cases where lower courts issued temporary stays for inmates, this one had a permanent injunction that followed “a full three-day bench trial on the merits — the first such trial anywhere on the constitutionality of nitrogen asphyxiation.”
That key outside advocate was Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck, a Supreme Court expert who filed an amicus brief. He said Alabama was trying to do something procedurally that it shouldn’t be allowed to do. “After all,” Vladeck wrote, “allowing Alabama to execute Mr. Lee through a grant of emergency relief would necessarily frustrate this Court’s ability to conduct plenary review of the district court’s final, permanent injunction.”
To be clear, the justices can still reverse Marks’ ruling in a future round of litigation. Or, as the judge noted, the state can execute him by other means. The question on Thursday night was whether the court would make the case moot by letting Alabama execute Lee before the state’s appeal could be fully vetted in an orderly fashion. With that in mind, it would almost be unremarkable that the court rejected the state’s emergency application, if it weren’t for the fact that the justices had previously intervened to help governments conduct executions over lower courts’ objections.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that three justices voted to let Lee’s execution go forward as planned, its unconstitutionality notwithstanding. Of course, while none of the justices explained their views, we can presume that the three dissenters are prepared to disagree with the lower courts’ constitutional analysis if and when the case comes back to the high court.
Next week, the justices are set to issue another round of opinions from cases argued this term, as we creep toward the end of June, when some of the court’s most contentious decisions have historically come.
Have any questions or comments for me? Pleasesubmit them through this formfor a chance to be featured in the Deadline: Legal Blog and newsletter.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
Ex-reality TV star and MAGA-backed Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt angrily conceded the race Friday in a combative video in which he derided, and appeared to threaten, the women who finished ahead of him.
Nearly four days after The Associated Press projected Councilmember Nithya Raman will advance to the November general election to face incumbent Mayor Karen BassPratt announced that “the campaign portion of my mission to save Los Angeles is coming to a close, and I’m moving on to the next, more interesting phase.”
With 99% of ballots counted as of Friday, the AP put Pratt in third place, with just more than a quarter of the vote — 3.5 percentage points behind Raman and nearly 9 points behind Bass.
Pratt initially stood in second as returns came in on primary night, but his lead over Raman steadily narrowed as mail-in ballots were counted. By Sunday, she had overtaken him by less than 1 percentage point.
President Donald Trump and other MAGA supporters suggested Pratt’s apparent reversal of fortune proved fraud, but elections experts say it is California’s voting systemcoupled with the city’s small Republican voter base, that explain his third-place finish.
What, exactly, Pratt’s next chapter in civic life will consist of is unclear. But if his Friday announcement is any indication — he called Bass and Raman “dumb and dumber” and “corrupt communists” — it will include continued attacks on his former opponents. And contrary to Pratt’s pledge that he would leave the city if he lost, he suggested he will instead stay put in LA.
“A lot of dim-witted jerks thought I was in this for a grift, that I was going to roll up and leave town if I didn’t get into City Hall,” Pratt said in the video. “Hey, morons, I didn’t get in this for political power. I got in this to expose this corrupt machine, and nothing has changed.”
Addressing Bass and Raman, Pratt added: “I will be lighting you up every single day, and now I don’t have to worry about offending BLN viewers. I don’t have campaign laws hamstringing me now. It’s war.”
Filled with expletives and images of fires, violence and homeless encampments, Pratt’s video channels the same angry populism he ran on. His Republican supporters —including Benny JohnsonTrump administration official Richard Grenell and the chair of the LA County GOP — cheered his final message as a candidate.
Best known for his role as Heidi Montag’s bad boyfriend on MTV’s “The Hills,” Pratt launched his surprise mayoral campaign in January, a year after his family home burned down in the Pacific Palisades fire. While his platform initially focused heavily on what he and his supporters characterized as the failures that led to the damage caused by the fires, Pratt expanded his campaign to focus on forcing homeless people off the streets, cleaning up alleged “fraud” in the city’s finances and saving abused dogs on Skid Row.
With his massive online following and social media savvy, Pratt catapulted himself from long-shot candidate to one who earned Trump’s support and managed to outraise both Bass and Raman.
In the video, Pratt also said he possesses “some recordings of one of your exalted candidates doing and saying something that would make her resign in shame.”
A spokesperson for Raman’s campaign declined to comment to MS NOW on Pratt’s message. Spokespeople for the Bass campaign did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama on Friday pledged to move forward with negotiations on a controversial luxury coastal resort linked to Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushnerthat is set for construction on the country’s only island.
The deal has sparked protests in Albaniawith some calling for Rama’s resignation. But in an interview Friday with MS NOW, the prime minister waved off such criticism as “ideological bulls—.”
He told MS NOW that “negotiations” for the property were still ongoing and dismissed concerns of any conflict of interest, insisting talks began before President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year and that Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, was not acting on behalf of the U.S. government.
“When Jared Kushner and Ivanka came here and we started work together, it was not clear if Trump would go to jail or go to the White House,” he said, appearing to refer to Donald Trump’s legal battles ahead of the 2024 election.
The project, backed by Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partnerswill cost an estimated $1.6 billion. It involves the construction of dozens of hotels, apartments and villas along the country’s western coast. A larger development is planned for the Narta Lagoon area, home to a wildlife reserve, and a smaller resort is set to be built on the uninhabited island of Sazan, a former communist-era military base.
Ivanka Trump said she and her husband first came across the location by accident while on a trip in 2021. “We were on a friend’s boat, and we stopped for a swim,” she told podcaster David Senra last month. “Effectively, that’s how we found it. We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated.”
In response to the construction, protests have broken out in the country’s capital, Tirana, where tens of thousands of residents have marched through the streets proclaiming, “Albania is not for sale.” Many demonstrators have carried cut-outs of flamingos, a species whose habitats they say will be destroyed if the project goes through.
Rama stressed that the deal included other parties besides Kushner’s firm. He said the “incredible team of investors” was “not coming to Albania to destroy” but “coming to build” and suggested his country was being used as a pawn to attack the Trump administration.
“Don’t come here to fight with Trump. It’s not your fight,” he said. “You want me to believe that suddenly the American media, the American influencers, the American world is caring about some flamingos in Albania?”
Earlier this month, Albania’s anti-corruption agency opened a probe into how the investment firm was granted the right to the land, which was previously designated a protected area.
Redi Muçi, a member of parliament from the left-wing party Lëvizja Bashkë (Movement Together), said the agreement between the Kushner-backed firm and the Albanian government “looks like political and financial corruption” because “there is no competition.”
“It’s very fashionable to use all these words,” Rama said when he was asked about accusations of widespread corruption in his country.
While the protests were sparked by the Kushner-backed project, they have expanded into broader anti-government demonstrations, with many calling for Rama’s resignation.
During his interview with MS NOW, the prime minister said he would not resign and suggested, without evidence, that a “majority” of the population “wants the project.” He also said an “investment of such magnitude in tourism” would bring “a lot of income for everyone” in the country.
Construction of the development could also complicate Albania’s effort to join the European Union. On Tuesday, EU spokesperson Guillaume Mercier reminded the country, which is one of the poorest in Europe, that its entry into the coalition depends on adherence to its laws, including those on the environment.
“Albania should refrain from action that could undermine the fulfillment of the closing benchmark, and we expect the Albanian authorities to act without delay,” spokesman Guillaume Mercier said.
Rama told MS NOW he was not concerned that the construction would impact his country’s chances of joining the EU.
In the U.S., news of the resort reignited ethical concerns around Kushner’s business dealings and possible conflicts of interest. While he holds no formal government role — and is frequently referred to as simply a “volunteer” by the Trump White House — Kushner has been a key figure in the administration’s foreign policy efforts, participating in negotiations between Israel and Hamasand more recently, in the Iran was.
He’s done so while attempting to raise billions of dollars from governments in the region for his private equity fund. After the first Trump administration ended, Kushner secured $2 billion in investment from the Saudi government, along with hundreds of millions more from other Gulf nations, including the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Critics have suggested foreign leaders may be using the president’s son-in-law to curry favor with Trump. Kushner and the White House have previously claimed he is abiding by all applicable ethics laws.
Ines de La Cuetara is a London-based reporter for MS NOW.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”
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