The day the undocumented became a profit centre

It was always going to happen; mass deportation was always going to become an opportunity for profit.

I was going to do PART TWO of my ‘It’s the narrative, stupid’ today, but I’m pushing that to cover what I think is an important story that needs to be highlighted in the daily chaos in which it may well get buried. This is going to be a lengthy article, so buckle up, as this story needs to be told with both historical context and an eye on the dystopian vision facing American society in Trump’s zero-sum deportation game.

There is little doubt that in Trump's world, the misery of others is an opportunity for profit. Once you take the brakes off unbridled capitalism through deregulation and create a permissive environment for the extortion of the vulnerable experiencing poverty or uncertainty, you open the door to the creation of 21st-century economic plantation owners.

There is little question, the campaign to dehumanise the undocumented has always been part of a plan reminiscent of the expulsion of the Jews in Europe during the Third Reich. Any suggestion that the current administration has no such intent is a lie. It is precisely their plan, and on an industrial scale, that will be recorded in history as a crime against humanity.

Immigration has long been a weapon of war for Republicans. It is a cynical weaponisation of misery that has been embedded in American political discourse for decades. Over time, it has become the third rail of US politics. The Republican Party is not the first political party to weaponise immigration and won’t be the last. Throughout history, societies have often sought scapegoats for their political failings and nationalist ambitions. As a result, immigrants have frequently been blamed for the problems that exist within the country they adopt as their home. It’s a lazy argument that has always made immigrants a soft target for political and physical violence.

In the US, immigration reform, or rather the lack thereof, is a plague on both sides of the aisle. Nobody wants to see illegal immigration, and certainly not at uncontrolled levels. This is what makes it a potent political weapon, and one candidate, Trump, took full advantage of it in his 2024 campaign. The bipartisan immigration bill negotiated in late 2023 was unquestionably the most conservative-leaning legislative proposal in recent history. The last comprehensive immigration reform was enacted almost four decades ago, during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. The new bill primarily focused on border security and provided no pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients. This was a huge concession on the part of Democrats. In normal times, it would likely have been adopted and regarded as a big Republican win. But these were not normal times.

Trump knew the political value of NOT addressing the problem, and he was right. Immigration was a big win for him in 2016, and he knew it would be for 2024. He had his finger on the pulse of American sentiment, which Biden had failed to address during his term. It sends cold shivers down my spine to think of the consequences of leaving the immigration door open; Democrats had brought it upon themselves. They had unleashed a Nazi approach to immigration that appealed to the very worst in a large segment of the voting population. Trump embraced it using phrases like ‘They are poisoning the blood of our country” and calling the undocumented “vermin”. These were all terms used by the Nazis about the Jews. He touted ‘mass deportation’ and the crowd went wild. For those of us who could see what he was doing, it was chilling, but the media largely shrugged it off as ‘Trump being Trump’. Shame on them for that.

The tragedy is, there’s a thriving market for racism, misogyny, and homophobia in America, and the resulting permissive environment created by his return to the White House is where we find ourselves today. There’s a segment of society that’s prepared to punch themselves in the face and cheer themselves into economic slavery, provided Trump mass-deports the illegal immigrants—a true indictment of our humanity.

Suppose you ask the average Trump voter how much tax undocumented workers pay. In that case, they will unanimously say ‘NOTHING’. This is proof that the hard right false narrative breaks through and plays into the claim that they are leeching off society.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reports:

• Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. Most of that amount, $59.4 billion, was paid to the federal government, while the remaining $37.3 billion was paid to state and local governments.

• Undocumented immigrants paid federal, state, and local taxes of $8,889 per person in 2022. In other words, for every 1 million undocumented immigrants who reside in the country, public services receive $8.9 billion in additional tax revenue.

• More than a third of the tax dollars paid by undocumented immigrants go toward payroll taxes dedicated to funding programs that these workers are barred from accessing. Undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance taxes in 2022.

There are severe economic impacts as a consequence of removing what is effectively just over 5% of the US workforce. According to 2022 Pew Research, this could reduce GDP by 2.6%, which is nearly $5 trillion over 10 years. Undocumented workers form 14% of all agriculture jobs, 12% of all construction jobs and 8% of all manufacturing jobs. Removing these workers will result in a catastrophic self-inflicted wound.

Given the current level of the national debt and the proposed addition of almost $4 trillion to provide tax cuts for the rich, it is an act of economic suicide to embark upon a program of mass deportation. It simply makes no financial sense.

Reporting in December 2024 by Cristobal Ramon and Gabrielle Berger states:

A June 2024 study found that deporting 7.5 million undocumented workers would produce three years of higher inflation, which would peak at 3.1% points.

They go on to state:

Deporting the undocumented all at once would cost the U.S. government at least $315 billion, an amount that expands to $967.9 billion if the U.S. deports one million individuals every year for a decade.

Keep this number in mind as we will examine it further in a moment. Let me be clear, I’m certainly not making a case for illegal immigration here. But the failure of immigration policy dating back to Ronald Reagan means that the lack of an efficient asylum and immigration system inevitably leads to illegal immigration. The very fact that a system is in place to allow undocumented workers to pay taxes is an admission that the current system is not fit for purpose. Furthermore, no legislative steps have been taken to address the issue. This is primarily because it has provided a very cheap pool of labour for unscrupulous American businesses, of which Trump’s golf courses were longstanding beneficiaries.

Democrats rightly claim that Biden deported more illegal immigrants than Trump over the same period in 2024. As of March 25th, Trump, despite the made-for-TV, expensive theatre, removals were 10% below those of Biden, with a much higher cost of deportation. This is what happens when your government takes the lead in a global reality TV series that has dispensed with the rule of law.

Before we examine the next chapter in Trump’s march to authoritarian rule, it’s worth exploring what economic damage his administration caused in his last term. Watch this clip from the Cato Institute, which is hardly the bastion of liberal values. Their mission statement reads:

The mission of the Cato Institute is to keep the principles, ideas, and moral case for liberty alive for future generations while moving public policy in the direction of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.

Once you remove the performative politics and actions, the truth is that an approach operating within the rule of law is more efficient than one that operates in a state of performative chaos. Trump’s record on removals in his first term was NOT better than either Obama's or Biden's, despite separating children from their parents at the border.

He soon intends to put an end to his poor deportation stats. It appears he may be about to turbocharge his efforts with the help of military contractors. Stories have been circulating for some time regarding the deputising of civilians to assist ICE in its deportation program. I believe plans go much deeper than that.

As reported by Dasha Burns and Myah Ward in Politico on February 25th:

‘A group of prominent military contractors, including former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, has pitched the Trump White House on a proposal to carry out mass deportations through a network of “processing camps” on military bases, a private fleet of 100 planes, and a “small army” of private citizens empowered to make arrests.

The blueprint — laid out in a 26-page document President Donald Trump’s advisers received before the inauguration — carries an estimated price tag of $25 billion and recommends a range of aggressive tactics to rapidly deport 12 million people before the 2026 midterms.

This is where we return to our previous numbers, which indicate that the cost of removing 11 million undocumented immigrants would be between $315 billion and $967 billion if done over a decade. These figures, of course, are based on a massive expansion of detention facilities. For reference, the current annual cost of a detention centre bed per detainee is estimated at $57,378. The key point here is simply that the math doesn’t add up. The suggestion that this could be done for $25 billion over two years is pure fantasy, but not an unusual approach by corporations who quote low and then deliver huge overrun costs. The bottom line is that if this process is done on the cheap, it will lead to desperate detention conditions and human rights abuses. But Trump won’t be too worried about that because he’s planning to cut off US engagement with the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Now let’s be very clear, the White House’s position as articulated by spokesman Kush Desai, was:

“The administration remains aligned on and committed to a whole-of-government approach to securing our borders, mass deporting criminal illegal migrants, and enforcing our immigration laws.”

He went on to state:

“..it is ultimately up to the agencies responsible for carrying out the President’s agenda to consider and sign contracts to advance their mission,”

If it’s true that Trump wants to deport up to 12 million undocumented immigrants before the 2026 midterms, that would mean deporting half a million each month. While that seems impossible to me, where there is a possible $25 billion on the table, you can safely assume Erik Prince and his buddies can come up with Trump’s version of the Wagner group, famous for doing Putin’s dirty work. It’s worth noting, by the way, that Blackwater contractors were found guilty in 2007 for actions in Iraq, which killed 17 Iraqi civilians and wounded 20 others. It was thought that it was just the tip of a much broader issue with systematic abuse of the civilian population by Prince’s mercenaries.

As stated in Politico reporting:

Several contractors were charged with manslaughter, and four were convicted in 2014. Trump pardoned them at the end of his first term in December 2020.

Trump’s pardon was just one example of the influence of Prince’s family during the first Trump administration. Betsy DeVos, Prince’s sister, served as the president’s Education secretary, while Prince used his Trump connections as he chased business ventures in the U.S. and abroad.

The Hill reported that Prince, in an interview with NewsNation’s Leland Vittert, highlighted that the current government-centric approach simply would not have the ability to scale mass deportation and suggested that the Trump administration would, in his words:

“Have a difficult task, and this memo describes how to supplement that capability with what the private sector does best — find a way to do something cheaper, better and faster at greater scale.”

Trump is already saying that they may need to ‘deputise people to assist’ ICE in their work. Prince’s plan appears to suggest the use of disused military bases as holding camps for detainees before deportation. We know that Republicans are looking to repurpose appropriated funding by shifting money to Homeland Security. This then asks more questions about whether these camps would become slave labour camps as part of the process to cover the cost of housing the detainees? Under normal circumstances, I would think the whole thing preposterous, but it would be absolutely in line with the way Trump and the likes of Stephen Miller operate.

We’ve been here before

The problem I’m having is that all of the above seems plausible to me, and I fear that there would be millions of cult members cheering Trump on. His current plans and proclivity for made-for-TV moments are not cost-effective at a time when he is searching behind the cushions of the government sofa to fund tax cuts for the rich. If he wants to scale up deportation, which appears to be his intent, he can only do it with a private army. Politico reports in excerpts from the white paper produced by Prince and his partner’s new entity 2USV:

“The management team of 2USV includes individuals and companies that specialise in erecting temporary housing facility”. “In fact, this group has erected temporary camps for incoming Afghan refugees and for the US CBP,”

As I have stated, none of the above represents an accepted proposal by the administration, but if I were a betting man, I would wager that this or a plan like it will be the upcoming direction of travel if Trump is serious about his mass deportation plan. What is more terrifying is that I believe there will be no Republican congressional pushback to such a plan.

Given the administration’s disdain and their belief that undocumented immigrants are, in his words, ‘vermin’, I foresee an avalanche of human rights violations that will do nothing to help remove the US from the Human Rights Watchlist by Civicus Monitor. This will make child separation look like a walk in the park, and I can’t see anything or anyone who would be prepared to stop him.

Please do as you will with this information, but I thought it essential to bring it to light because it has the potential to be a Warsaw Ghetto moment for the so-called global beacon of democracy.