Washington, DC — In ongoing installments of America’s Voice “This is What Mass Deportation Looks Like,” we highlight the Trump administration’s efforts to turbocharge mass deportations and we connect the dots between various developments that, together, capture the scale of Trump’s ambitions and the larger resultant damage on all Americans.

In recent days, we’ve seen how the Trump White House and Members of Congress are seeking to dramatically scale up funding for immigration enforcement – at the cost of Americans’ health and economic security — and are ensnaring U.S. citizens in the process. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports, “Justice Dept. Agrees to Allow DOGE Access Sensitive Immigration Case Data” – news that should be viewed alongside revelations about IRS information-sharing to enable immigration enforcement and misuse of a Social Security Administration database to crack down on immigrants as reminders how the administration is, in the Post’s words, seeking “to claw deeper into vast troves of federal data to advance the president’s aggressive deportation efforts.” Of note, DOGE’s litany of errors in their short existence – such as sending notices telling U.S. citizens to deport – underscores the near certainty they will continue to make mistakes and compound the chaos and costs inherent to the mass deportation agenda.

According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:

“This is what mass deportation looks like – making every appendage of our federal government into a tool for unsparing, costly, chaotic, and unpopular deportations of long-settled immigrants who are deeply rooted in American families and communities. These latest revelations are a harsh testament to the scope of this administration’s efforts to not just intrude on the lives of immigrants but violate the privacy of every American. Just as troubling is the complete silence from leading lawmakers with supposed concerns about the power of the state and the federal government prying into American families’ lives and sensitive information.”

Below, find key excerpts from the Washington Post story, “Justice Dept. Agrees to Allow DOGE Access Sensitive Immigration Case Data”:

“Representatives of the U.S. DOGE Service have received permission to access a highly sensitive Justice Department system that contains information including the addresses and case histories of millions of legal and undocumented immigrants, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The system — the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Courts and Appeals System, or ECAS — is used to store records of immigrants who have interacted with the U.S. immigration system, detailing their name, addresses, previous immigration-court testimony, and any history of engagement with law enforcement, among other things.

… The push to access the Justice Department system is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to claw deeper into vast troves of federal data to advance the president’s aggressive deportation efforts.

Last week, officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement who are working with DOGE asked to use a sensitive Medicare database, including personal health information and addresses, to help ICE locate people the administration does not think are in the country legally.

At DOGE’s behest, the Social Security Administration listed more than 6,000 living immigrants as dead in a bid to make them self-deport, overriding the objections of career staff. At the IRS, officials agreed this month to share data with the Department of Homeland Security, suggesting that the administration may want to use tax information to find as many as 7 million people suspected of being in the country illegally.

And at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, DOGE staffers are looking to identify and kick out mixed-status households, vowing to ensure that undocumented immigrants do not benefit from public housing programs even if they live with citizens…”

Washington, DC – The Trump administration’s indiscriminate mass deportation measures are rapidly broadening, extending far beyond their original targets to now include U.S. citizens and legal residents. A Georgia-born citizen, Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez,  was detained in Florida despite presenting his birth certificate; a New Mexico teen, Jose Hermosillo, visiting Arizona was detained and held for nearly 10 days by Border Patrol before his case was dismissed by a judge; and Kilmar Ábrego García, a long-settled resident granted deportation protection by the Trump administration in 2019, is now being refused return to the United States. Additionally, a U.S. doctor and a lawyer – both U.S. citizens– have found themselves ensnared in this growing wave of wrongful detentions, underscoring the widening scope of the administration’s immigration actions.

These cases, alongside new court battles and reports of lawful permanent residents facing deportation, underscore a dangerous erosion of due process and the consequences are spreading far beyond immigrant communities.

According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice: 

“We have long said that attacks on immigrants are just the tip of the spear of unchecked government intrusion on the  liberties of all. Trump’s obsession with mass deportation is coming at the supreme cost of due process and freedom. The right to due process is a cornerstone of our Constitution, yet the Trump administration continues to assault the safety and liberty of American citizens. The recent detentions of U.S. citizens like Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez in Florida and Jose Hermosillo in Arizona are warnings of the dangers of the administration’s indiscriminate immigration enforcement practices. When the government disregards legal status, documentation, and even birth certificates, it reveals a system operating without accountability. These cases show a pattern: a deliberate erosion of legal safeguards that protect all of us.”

Washington, DC – Below is a column by Maribel Hastings from America’s Voice en Español translated to English from Spanish. It ran in several Spanish-language media outlets earlier this week:

This Tax Week, the negative consequences of the agreement between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and ICE, to share information about undocumented taxpayers, carries special urgency, both in matters of privacy as well as the loss of billions of dollars in federal, state, and local tax payments if people without documents stop paying taxes or are deported.

Last week, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) presented an analysis that concludes that “every 10-percentage point drop in the income tax compliance rate of undocumented immigrants would lower federal tax revenue by $8.6 billion per year, and state and local tax collections by $900 million per year.” That’s a combined reduction of $9.5 billion annually.

A thirty percentage point drop in the tax compliance rate would lead to a $25.9 billion annual reduction in payments to the federal government and $2.6 billion to state and local governments.

These figures should alarm the Trump administration, which has proposed not only an anti-immigrant policy but one that is, in many cases, illegal and unconstitutional, in its obsessive crusade against immigrants of color.

The IRS-ICE agreement allows the agency charged with collecting taxes to share data, which until now has been kept secret, with the immigration agency — data about the contributors who fill out their tax declarations using Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs), which the IRS gives out to some categories of noncitizens who cannot obtain a Social Security number. The idea is to locate them and deport them.

Various high-level IRS officials, including the acting IRS Commissioner, Melanie Krause, resigned because the agreement clearly violates federal laws that protect the privacy of taxpayers’ information, independent of their immigration status. Only Congress can request that the information be revealed under special circumstances, but not for immigration matters.

The agreement should also worry citizens and authorized residents because no one knows to what end the federal government wants to access tax information. Ignoring these developments, and arguing that they will only affect undocumented people, is playing with fire. This contributes to eroding protections and individual rights, especially before a Trump administration that neither respects due process, nor what the courts rule, including the highest court in the land.

This has been proven in Trump’s reluctance to bring back a legal Maryland resident, Salvadoran Kilmar Ábrego García, who was deported “by mistake” to the infamous CECOT prison in El Salvador, even though the nation’s Supreme Court ruled that the administration should “facilitate” the return of the young man who is married to a U.S. citizen and the father of three U.S. citizen children.

But to analyze the possible effects of the IRS-ICE agreement on government coffers in just dollars and cents, we do not have to go very far. These days, stories abound in the media of accountants saying that their undocumented clients are asking if it would be safe to file their taxes, in the face of fear that they will be detained and deported. Or experts warning about the loss of revenue at all levels.

According to the American Immigration Council, “in 2023, households led by undocumented immigrants paid $89.8B in total taxes. This includes $33.9B in state and local taxes and $55.8B in federal taxes.” In 2022, combined taxes totaled almost $100B, according to ITEP.

Also in 2022, “undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance taxes,” ITEP reported. These are benefits to which they are not entitled.

With the IRS-ICE agreement and mass deportations, Trump, once again, shoots the US economy in the foot.

The original Spanish version is here.

Washington, DC — The following is a statement from America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas reacting to the details and implications of last night’s Supreme Court’s ruling that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the return of Kilmar García to Maryland.

According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice: 

“While the language the Supreme Court majority used in its ruling was carefully chosen, make no mistake, the message was clear: the Trump administration must abide by the rule of law and Mr. Kilmar Abrego García must be returned to his family.

Predictably, Stephen Miller and other administration voices continue to lie about Mr. García; his background; and their ability and responsibility to return him to his family.  As we saw today in Judge Xinis’ courtroom, the Trump administration seeks to delay and obfuscate – and to defy the rule of law and the ruling by the Supreme Court. It was another shocking, though not surprising, display of their disdain for our Constitution.  As Judge Xinis wrote, their excuse for delay ‘blinks at reality.’

We join the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and others in support of the García family and their overdue reunification. Yet the significance of this case is much greater than just for one man and one family.

As we have been saying, immigration is the tip of the spear in the Trump administration’s attacks on the rule of law and due process and their attempts to run roughshod over the separation of powers is a threat to all Americans. The Supreme Court stood up to this lawlessness and the Trump administration now must follow the law.”

Next Monday, Trump ally and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele will visit the White House. If the Trump administration has not yet reunified Kilmar García with his family before the visit:

• President Bukele should be asked if he will return Mr. García to the U.S. if President Trump requests it.
• Relatedly, President Trump must be asked why an administration and presidency predicated upon the belief of this President’s powers of negotiation is incapable or unwilling to follow the law and persuade El Salvador to return Mr. García to his family.

Washington, DC –  A States Newsroom article, “ICE director envisions Amazon-like mass deportation system: ‘Prime, but with human beings’,” recaps speeches from the “2025 Border Security Expo” held in Phoenix and featuring several Trump administration immigration leaders, including Trump’s Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons:

“The leader of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that his dream for the agency is squads of trucks rounding up immigrants for deportation the same way that Amazon trucks crisscross American cities delivering packages. ‘We need to get better at treating this like a business,’ Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said, explaining he wants to see a deportation process “like (Amazon) Prime, but with human beings.’”

According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice: 

“Human beings aren’t products to be wrapped, packaged, and shipped to fulfill an order. Yet the acting leader of ICE believes that is the ‘dream’ way for ICE to fulfill Trump’s order of mass deportation. Todd Lyons is the one who needs to be sent packing – and his comments encapsulate so much about this administration and their cruel and costly mass deportation agenda and worldview. Human beings, regardless of immigration status, aren’t Amazon packages.  We’ve experienced the violence that accompanies the dehumanization of immigrants, and we know the danger within this sentiment and line of thinking. As the administration turbocharges its mass deportation agenda, they are viewing any immigrant without status as a target to toss aside and ship out of the country. Immigrants are hardworking taxpayers, dedicated parents, and dependable co-workers; they are community members, Dreamers, TPS holders and caregivers; they have dreams and due process rights and basic dignities that this administration refuses to acknowledge. America is a nation of immigrants who have always enriched and strengthened this nation.”

In addition to the dehumanizing language, this administration continues to make clear that any immigrant without legal status is “criminal” to be deported (despite unauthorized status being a civil, not criminal, violation).  In addition to President Trump himself, the White House press secretary and Tom Homan, each of whom has regurgitated this view, the head of CBP’s El Centro California border sector, Gregory Bovino, reiterated the point in an interview with CalMatters. Upon questioning that highlighted that 77 of 78 immigrants recently arrested by Border Patrol in Kern County had no criminal record, Bovino said, “‘Every single one of the 78 that we arrested were criminals. Eight U.S.C. 1325 – illegal entry into the United States,’ he said, citing federal code for what is a misdemeanor offense … ‘If you’re an illegal alien, you’re getting it. A fentanyl dealer, you get it … It’s game on – anywhere.’”

Washington, DC — “Nearly 300 Students Have Had Visas Revoked and Could Face Deportation,” the New York Times reported:

“Nearly 300 international students were abruptly stripped of their ability to stay in the United States in recent days, according to universities and media reports, sowing fear among students and confusion at schools scrambling to help students facing detention and possible deportation … But lawyers said the Trump administration had often given no reason at all, leaving them to guess why students were targeted.”

The story puts into the big picture what numerous college campuses and local media have been reporting: beyond the headlines and in conjunction with the administration’s broader anti-immigration dragnet, the Trump administration is seeking to evict foreign students.

According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice: 

“This is what mass deportation looks like. Alongside high profile cases and major Trump administration announcements are the insidious everyday examples of what they are up to and who they are targeting. The administration’s efforts to detain and deport long-residing immigrants from communities across the country fits alongside their efforts to revoke visas from international students, including for undisclosed reasons, and to purge and keep out as many immigrants as possible. All of it comes at a cost for America, from depriving our economy of talented workers to spreading fear on college campuses to chilling future interest from foreign students from studying in America.”

A sampling of recent state and local examples of the administration targeting foreign students include:

• WGBH Boston reports, “UMass, Harvard student visas revoked in ‘new stage’ of Trump immigration crackdown,” stating that, “Seventeen current and former international students from Harvard, UMass Boston and UMass Amherst had their visas revoked amid the Trump administration’s ongoing push to deport international students, according to announcements from the universities’ leadership over the weekend.”
• Two Dartmouth students have had their F-1 statuses terminated: The Dartmouth reports, “Ph.D student Xiaotian Liu GR’s F-1 student status was abruptly revoked by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on April 4, according to a press release from the New Hampshire chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. A second student’s record was also terminated, according to a statement from a College spokesperson.”
• University of Minnesota graduate student detained by ICE: NBC News reports, “A graduate student at the University of Minnesota was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Thursday at an off-campus residence, the school said in a statement.”
• University of Florida student detained by ICE and transported to Miami Detention Center: Miami New Times reports,” On March 28, Felipe Zapata Velásquez, a 27-year-old food and resource economics international student in his junior year, was arrested by the Gainesville Police Department for driving with an expired license and registration tag, according to police records. ICE took him to Jacksonville, where deportation proceedings began, his mother told the Colombian news channel NTN24.”
• ICE officers detain University of Alabama doctoral student: The Guardian states, “There was an outcry on campus at the University of Alabama on Thursday after US immigration authorities detained a doctoral student – an event which campus officials confirmed on Wednesday.”

Washington, DC — The following are statements from America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas and America’s Voice legal advisor David Leopold reacting to the details and implications of this evening’s 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling lifting Judge Boasberg’s temporary restraining order against the Trump administration’s use of the “Alien Enemies Act.”

According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice: 

“This administration’s attacks on immigrants are the tip of the spear when it comes to attacks on all of our freedoms. While tonight’s Supreme Court ruling allows for basic due process, it does not hold President Trump to account for his indiscriminate attacks on immigrants or his invocation of an 18th century war time act that has previously led to internment camps and the trampling on the rights of U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike.

Instead of standing up for a full-throated defense of democracy and the rule of law, tonight’s ruling hands Trump a chisel to keep chipping away and eroding core tenets of our democracy.”

According to David Leopold, leading immigration attorney and America’s Voice legal advisor:

“While it’s good the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the people subject to the ‘Alien Enemies Act’ are entitled to habeas relief, it’s nevertheless disappointing that a majority of the Court did not hold the administration accountable for its outrageous behavior, including surreptitiously invoking the ‘Alien Enemies Act’ without notice and in a manner that was clearly designed to deny people their due process rights. As Justice Sotomayor observed in her dissent, ‘the Government’s conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law.’ We would expect more from the Supreme Court of the United States as the Trump administration takes a sledgehammer to the Constitution.”

Washington, DC — In a ruling yesterday blocking the Trump administration’s attempt to rescind Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from Venezuelans, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen noted this administration’s “generalization of criminality” to Venezuelans, calling it “baseless” and assessing it, “smacks of racism predicated on generalized false stereotypes.”

The judge’s assertion rings especially true in light of the details that continue to emerge about the Venezuelans summarily deported without due process to a notorious prison in El Salvador, including fresh reporting highlighting that a Maryland father and spouse of a U.S. citizen with protected status and no criminal record was among those deported. As Nick Miroff of The Atlantic writes, “An ‘Administrative Error’ Sends a Maryland Father to a Salvadoran Prison,” noting:

“The Trump administration acknowledged in a court filing Monday that it had grabbed a Maryland father with protected legal status and mistakenly deported him to El Salvador, but said that U.S. courts lack jurisdiction to order his return from the mega-prison where he’s now locked up.

…Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has a 5-year-old disabled child who is also a U.S. citizen, has no criminal record in the United States, according to his attorney. The Trump administration does not claim he has a criminal record, but called him a “danger to the community” and an active member of MS-13 [the article goes on to describe why “Police did not identify him as a gang member”].

As Senator Corey Booker (D-NJ) stated, “The Trump administration called it an ‘administrative error.’ But that error led to a nightmare for Maryland Resident Abrego Garcia” (listen to more from Senator Booker’s floor remarks on immigration yesterday here).

Also read Jonathan Blitzer in The New Yorker: “The Makeup Artist Donald Trump Deported Under the Alien Enemies Act,” detailing how “The President has invoked the law to send Venezuelans to prison in El Salvador without due process—and, in many cases, under false pretenses.”

As America’s Voice legal advisor and leading immigration attorney David Leopold wrote in his Washington Post op-ed this Sunday, “Trump’s immigrant purge is part of a larger agenda”:

“[D]ue process matters as a cornerstone of fairness and justice and is not a mere legal technicality. It mandates that no individual, including noncitizens in the United States, be deprived of life, liberty or property without a fair and just process. It is enshrined in the Constitution as a safeguard against arbitrary executive power … The Trump administration has used its first few months to target the due process rights of immigrants. If left unchecked, its efforts will threaten the broader rights and liberties of us all.”

• Read yesterday’s America’s Voice statement, “Compare & Contrast on Due Process: David Leopold Op-Ed vs. Stephen Miller Comments”

WASHINGTON D.C. — Today, America’s Voice hosted a press call outlining how mass deportations, coupled with proposed cuts to legal migration, will impact the American economy. This is the first in a series of calls focused on the consequences of Trump’s mass deportation plans.

Speakers shared data and economic analysis projecting how mass deportations, family separations, and cuts to visa and legal immigration avenues will impact every American. Of the potential consequences, they highlighted the likelihood of mass deportations spiking inflation, driving up deficits, cutting revenues, shrinking the workforce, and leading to a decline in GDP.

Here’s what economists and policy experts had to say on how President-elect Trump’s mass deportation and immigration plans will impact the U.S. economy:

Robert G. Lynch, Professor of Economics at Washington College, said: “Studies of past mass deportation episodes in the United States have shown that they caused the U.S. economy to contract. Jobs for American workers declined, American wages went down, and prices rose. The idea that mass deportation would help American citizens is an illusion. It has never worked in the past and it won’t work in the future.”

Resources from Robert G. Lynch:

• “Literature Review on the Economic Consequences of the Deportation of Unauthorized Immigrants,” by Robert G. Lynch (Washington College – Department of Economics) and Michael Ettlinger (University of New Hampshire) and
• “The Economic Impact on Citizens and Authorized Immigrants of Mass Deportation” by Robert G. Lynch (Washington College – Department of Economics) and Michael Ettlinger (University of New Hampshire)

Phillip Connor, Senior Demographer at FWD.us, said: “We must be clear: President-elect Trump’s mass deportation plans are, in reality, mass family separation plans. These policies would impact more than 28 million individuals in mixed-status and undocumented families, including over 20 million Latinos—approximately one in three Latinos in the U.S. Eliminating critical protections like Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), combined with the deportation of millions of others, would devastate local economies and lead to significant job losses in essential industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, and agriculture. Our communities and economy thrive when immigrants with deep ties to the U.S. can live and work with security and stability. Now is the time to pursue real policy solutions that address our immigration challenges without compromising our economy or betraying our nation’s core values.”

Resources from FWD.us:

• Mixed-status families: https://www.fwd.us/news/mixed-status-families-oct/
• Inflation impacts: https://www.fwd.us/news/immigration-inflation/
• Undocumented workforce: https://www.fwd.us/news/pathway-to-citizenship/#americas-workforce
• Coalition for the American Dream DACA report: https://www.coalitionfortheamericandream.us/daca-economics/

Stuart Anderson, Executive Director of National Foundation for American Policy, said: “The best way to predict a second Trump term on immigration is to look at the policies in the first term. The Trump administration reduced legal immigration by cutting refugee admissions and enacting various bans and restrictions, some of which were blocked, primarily on procedural grounds. One should expect similar policies in the second Trump administration. A recent report our organization released found that without immigrants and their children, there would have been no labor force growth in the U.S. economy over the past 5 years. The economic impact of reduced immigration could be significant, particularly over the medium and long term.”

Resources from NFAP:

• New NFAP Policy Brief: Immigrants and America’s Labor Force Growth, October 15, 2024
• NFAP Policy Brief: Trump Immigration Policy, Legal Immigration, August 2024

Angela Kelley, Consultant and Senior Advisor to American Immigration Lawyers Association’s President, said: ”The tectonic plates of immigration law and policy are about to shift dramatically. The promise of mass deportations will inevitably cause tremendous harm in all corners of the country. There isn’t a firewall that will protect Americans from feeling the burn of a loss of workers’ labor and contributions to our economy.”