By: Aaron Reichlin-Melnick |americanimmigrationcouncil.org

Seven months into President Trump’s term, immigration enforcement operations continue to ramp up, and the broader economic impacts are beginning to come into view. Rather than focus on the “worst of the worst,” the Trump administration has increasingly targeted worksites for immigration raids, picking up delivery drivers, street vendors, farmworkers, meatpackers, and others working in industries across the country. While it is too early to tell the full impact of the expanding mass deportation operations on the American economy and way of life, the warning signs are flashing red.

In California, analysis of the state’s workforce data reveals a substantial drop in workforce participation across all demographic groups, with the largest drop occurring among noncitizens. From May to June, after weeks of immigration worksite raids in Southern California and other parts of the state, the total workforce in California dropped by 3.1%, while the number of noncitizens showing up to work dropped by 7.2%. This reflects not only the direct impact of deportations, but the fears that immigration enforcement operations have created in communities, leading some people not to show up to work. According to the researchers, this represents the largest shrinking of the California workforce since the Great Recession.

Raids in California also led to significant drops in student attendance at schools. A June study that analyzed data on the first two months of school attendance in California’s Central Valley, the site of early raids led by Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino — who is now leading the Trump administration’s California raids — led to a 22% drop in school attendance throughout the region.

Beyond California, states around the country are seeing impacts on their workforces not only from the Trump administration’s raids but also from efforts to strip legal status from many people in the U.S. legally.  A new report from Economic Insights and Research Consulting found that deportations are already having an impact on the agricultural supply and on the construction industry. The 10 states with the highest concentration of undocumented immigrants in the construction industry saw a 0.1% drop in construction employment at a time when other states saw a 1.9% increase. The hospitality industry also showed a huge drop in growth, with the labor force rising just 0.2% in June 2025, compared to 1.5% in June 2024.

Similarly, according to the same report, the agricultural industry saw a total drop in employment of 155,000 workers from March 2025 to July 2025 — compared to a 2.2% increase in March 2024 to July 2024. While the researchers cautioned that it was too early to draw firm conclusions, they noted that the cost of fresh vegetables and meat (both beef and pork) rose by a similar rate over that period, suggesting upwards price pressures may be caused by labor force disruption due to Trump’s immigration operations.

Individual examples of businesses show that immigration raids and the stripping of legal status are having an impact around the country:

• In Ottumwa, Iowa, 200 workers at a meatpacking plant who had legal status under the Biden administration had to be terminated after Trump stripped their status.
• In Omaha, Nebraska, after a DHS raid in a meatpacking plant where half the employees were arrested, recruitment plummeted, and the plant had to cut back on production at a time when ground beef prices are already rising.
• In South Florida, one local grocery story serving the Latino community has seen a 20% drop in customer traffic and sales volume.
• In Los Angeles, food trucks and other businesses that cater to the immigrant population are seeing a major drop in customers.
• In Edison, New Jersey, a major commercial warehouse and shipping hub shuttered for days following an I-9 audit and a worksite raid.
• In Lovington, New Mexico, a raid at a dairy farm that led to the arrest of 11 employees caused the company to shut down temporarily.

Critically, when hiring their employees, many of the employers in this situation had used E-Verify—an internet-based system that compares information entered by an employee on an I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification form with U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) records.  These employers audited their workforce using E-Verify and believed that they were in compliance with immigration law. However, the White House recently stated that employers who rely on E-Verify and the I-9 process to check their employees for legal status are being “reckless.” This has left small businesses across the country with no clarity on the appropriate process to ensure compliance or how best to avoid being a target for DHS or ICE worksite enforcement actions.

As mass deportation enforcement actions continue and more data is reported, the broader impacts of Trump’s campaign of mass deportation will become clearer. For now, the early warning signs show a growing labor shortage, rising prices, terrified employees, and employers left in the lurch without any tools to ensure workforce stability.  Should these operations continue unabated over the next three and a half years, the situation could become far worse for the nation as a whole.

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