The undocumented immigrants targeted by President Donald Trump and the immigration enforcement agency ICE make a significant contribution to the United States public coffers, paying $89.9 billion in taxes in 2023.
According to the most recent figures from the American Immigration Council (AIC), there were 47.8 million immigrants—documented and undocumented—in the country in 2023 (14.3% of the total population), who paid a total of $651.9 billion in taxes. Specifically, in July 2023, there were 11.7 million undocumented people living in the United States, according to the Center for Migration Studies (CMS).
The Center for Migration Studies (CMS) highlights that undocumented immigrant households paid $89.8 billion in federal, state, and local taxes and accumulated $299 billion in purchasing power.
The Undocumented Immigrant Workforce
The Pew Research Center reports that in 2022, more than 30 million immigrants were employed in the United States, of whom 22.2 million were documented, while the remaining 8.3 million were undocumented.
The industries that hired the most undocumented immigrants that year were construction (13.7% of their workforce), agriculture (12.7%), hospitality (7.1%), general services—that is, jobs related to aspects such as cleaning or maintenance—(6.5%), and wholesale trade (5.5%), according to AIC. Followed by the transportation and warehousing sector (5.5%), manufacturing (5.4%), professional services (4.7%), retail trade (3.9%), and mining (3.6%).
AIC emphasizes the entrepreneurial role of immigrants who have been able to build a life in the country and highlights that nearly one in four entrepreneurs in the United States are immigrants, and not just in the lower categories: thus, in 2024, 230 companies on the Forbes Fortune 500 list were founded by immigrants or their children. These companies include some of the tech giants currently in the spotlight for Wall Street investors, such as Tesla, Nvidia, and Super Micro Computer.
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) estimates that if work authorization were granted to all undocumented immigrants residing in the country in 2022, their tax contributions would increase to $136.9 billion annually.
The Effect of Mass Deportations on the Economy
Trump’s deportation program led last weekend to protests against the massive immigration raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the California city of Los Angeles, where the Washington government deployed 2,000 National Guard troops.
In its 2024 report, the AIC warns that a federal plan for mass deportations would cause “significant labor disruptions” in multiple key sectors. For example, the construction and agriculture industries would lose at least one in eight workers, while in the hospitality sector, one in fourteen employees would be deported due to their undocumented status.
In another report dated 2024, AIC warns that these deportations by the U.S. government could lead to a significant reduction in the tax revenue currently paid by undocumented immigrants.
Thus, $46.8 billion in federal taxes, $29.3 billion in state and local taxes, $22.6 billion in Social Security, and $5.7 billion in Medicare, a health insurance program for people 65 and older, would be lost. The organization also warns that this deportation plan could cause the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) to decline by between 4.2% and 6.8%.
While the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that the deportation of between 1.3 and 8.3 million undocumented immigrants would reduce GDP by up to 7% by 2028.
