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James Witte is an affiliated research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and director of the Institute for Immigration Research. Marissa Kiss is a postdoctoral research fellow with the institute. This column was distributed by Tribune News Service.
With President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration upon us, much attention is focused on the rhetoric and reality surrounding his first day back in office. Per one count, Trump has made 41 day-one promises, with mass deportation topping the list. We should be more worried about micro-deportations.
The mass deportation rhetoric is loud and clear. At an October rally, Trump promised “the largest program in American History” on day one. The 1798 Alien Enemies Act, Trump claimed, would be invoked to protect the nation from invasion by millions of illegal aliens.
This would trigger long and lengthy legal challenges and, in the meantime, a broader understanding among Americans of mass deportation’s consequences.
Costs and logistics are a starting point. The American Immigration Council puts the one-time, immediate fiscal costs — identification, arrest, detention, legal proceedings and removal — of deporting an estimated 13 million unauthorized migrants at $315 billion.
For perspective, this migrant population is more than six times that of all inmates currently in America’s local, county, state and federal prisons and jails. This could not happen quickly, and if implemented within a decade would cost close to $1 trillion.
Mass deportation would also leave a painful hole in America’s workforce. While wages would rise, supply chains and production would be disrupted, particularly where unauthorized migrants play essential roles. For example, there would be shortages of home health workers in the Northeast or farm workers in California and Florida.
Nowhere would the disruption be more pronounced than in construction. Census data show 40 percent of construction workers as foreign-born and 31 percent as noncitizens. The unauthorized share is estimated at 23 percent (or nearly 466,000 workers) by the Center for American Progress.
Thus, mass deportation would bring localized pain. After 98 residents died in a 2021 condo collapse, more than 900,000 condo units in southern Florida were identified for inspection and repair. Among construction workers in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach areas, 77 percent are foreign-born and 55 percent are noncitizens. If unauthorized laborers are removed, who will do the work?
The same applies nationwide. Less than 40 percent of the five-year, $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has been allocated to announced projects. Bidding, contracting and building on the long-awaited infrastructure is still to come.
Finally, Americans’ openness to mass deportation would be tested once the enormous human and social costs become real: millions of lives upended, dreams shattered, and families separated. Suspicion and mistrust would heighten, as would anxiety and desperation, for any immigrant whose status is not apparent to suspicious neighbors and public officials. This climate of fear would extend to citizens living with unauthorized migrants in “mixed-status” households. There would likely be protests, counter protests and polarization unlike any in memory.
Quite simply, legal and political opposition and a taste of the economic and social costs make mass deportation unlikely. However, micro-deportations seem inevitable.
Separate from Trump’s day-one promises, the Republican-led House of Representatives has placed five immigration-related measures in an initial package of rules. Included are provisos that could set up an early vote to cut federal aid to “sanctuary cities” that do not cooperate with federal removal efforts.
Already in 2025, the House passed the Laken Riley Act authorizing deporting undocumented immigrants “charged with, arrested for, convicted for, or admits to having committed acts that constitute the essential elements of burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.” Definitions this broad make overzealous prosecution and disregard for due process real possibilities.
These provisions, central to many Republican campaigns, are likely to pass and would grant the executive branch legal authority and policy levers to immediately pursue a more robust micro-deportation strategy.
Prisons and jails would be obvious starting points. Transitory housing facilities and homeless encampments would follow. Tom Homan, Trump’s incoming border czar, has called for family detention centers that could include children in mixed-status families, and that parents subject to deportation with U.S.-citizen children “are going to have to make a decision what you want to do … take your child with you or leave the child here in the United States with a relative.”
Speaking on behalf of Mexican-Americans, who constitute the largest share of unauthorized migrants, former Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez says, “They’re coming to our schools, they’re coming to our hospital, they’re coming to our churches and sanctuaries on Sundays.”
Though differing in scale from mass deportation, micro-deportations will yield a smaller, more localized, and more likely mix of economic and social disruption. Fewer individuals, families, and communities may feel the pain, and it may receive less attention, but it will be widespread and very real.
