The case for mass deportation is that unenforced law invites more breaking of it, and that some towns carry costs they never agreed to. Drawing a line at the border is one thing. Removing millions of people who already live and work here is another, and I doubt it is feasible, affordable, or wise.
Start with the claim that undocumented immigrants overwhelm public benefits. Federal law bars them from nearly all means-tested programs, including SNAP, Medicaid, TANF, and subsidized Affordable Care Act plans. Emergency care, school lunches, and a few other exceptions remain.
Meanwhile they pay in. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which favors progressive taxes, estimates they paid $96.7 billion in taxes in 2022. That included $25.7 billion into Social Security, which they cannot collect. Where a city’s shelters or schools are strained, that reflects state and local capacity and funding, not a federal welfare transfer.
Now the cost of removal. The American Immigration Council, which favors immigration, puts a one-time mass deportation at $315 billion or more. By the same report, undocumented workers make up about one in seven construction workers and one in eight agricultural workers. Remove them and labor gets scarcer and prices rise.
If the worry is that legal status invites more crossings, the answer is enforcement at the border and rules for the future. It is not expelling a workforce already woven into the economy.
What troubles me most is the cost in empathy. Harsh tactics draw support even from some people with immigrant roots of their own. Yet cruelty toward vulnerable families and children is hard to square with Christian ethics or with basic decency.
So the real choice is not open borders against lawlessness. It is whether we formalize and tax the people already here, or pay for an enforcement regime with uncertain returns. I would choose a structured, enforceable, conditional path to legal status. It strengthens compliance and widens the tax base.