NEW REPORT: America’s Voice “End the ICE Tax” Finds Mass Deportation Is Driving Up Costs and Straining Nevada’s Economy
Las Vegas and Reno rank among the U.S. metro areas hit hardest by 2025 ICE enforcement surges, with arrests spiking more than 275 percent in both cities
NEVADA – A new report from America’s Voice, “End the ICE Tax,” details how the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda is raising prices, eliminating jobs, and gutting local economies. Nevada ranks among the states bearing the heaviest burden:
Key findings from the report include:
Nevada is one of the five states most reliant on immigrant labor (along with California, Florida, New Jersey, and New York). Since the enforcement surge began, construction employment across those five states fell 1.3 percent, while it grew 3.3 percent in the rest of the country.
Single-family home permits fell 9.2 percent across those same five states between June 2024 and June 2026, while the remaining states saw permits rise 3.0 percent.
The estimated construction value on building permits for new homes in those five states jumped 13.1 percent over the same period, compared to just 2.0 percent everywhere else.
ICE arrests in the Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas metro area surged 277 percent, from an average of 13 arrests a month in 2024 to 50 a month after the enforcement surge began, according to Brookings’ analysis of Deportation Data Project records.
ICE arrests in Reno jumped 280 percent, from an average of 7 a month to 26 a month over the same period, placing Reno alongside Las Vegas among the 86 U.S. metro areas Brookings identified as 2025 “surge cities.”
Nationally, consumer spending drops 6.2 percent and foot traffic falls 2.7 percent at the average business in the weeks after ICE enforcement hits a metro area, and the damage persists over time.
To read the full “ICE Tax” report, click here.
The report calls the cost of deportation to American consumers the “ICE Tax“: the price families pay every day because the government is choosing mass deportation led by ICE agents over the economic well-being of everyday Americans. America’s Voice’s new campaign calls on the Trump administration and Congress to reverse course and end the “ICE Tax” by stopping the mass deportations that are squeezing American families in every corner of the country.
Statement from Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“Nevada families are paying the price for Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s chaotic, disruptive and violent mass deportation campaign. ICE arrests have surged nearly threefold in both Las Vegas and Reno at the same time that construction is slowing across the states that rely most on immigrant labor at the exact moment more homes need to be built, not fewer. It’s time to put lawmakers on notice and end the ICE tax and put Nevada families ahead of a reckless policy that is driving up costs at the store, hurting small businesses owners, and making it harder to build the homes this state badly needs.”
Read about the report in Spanish here.