NEW REPORT: America’s Voice “End the ICE Tax” Finds Mass Deportation Is Draining California’s Economy and Emptying Storefronts

Los Angeles County businesses near enforcement sites lost an estimated $3.16 million in revenue in just two weeks, as California’s construction industry also reels from the immigration crackdown

Washington, DC – A new report from America’s Voice, “End the ICE Tax,” details how the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda is raising prices, costing jobs, and hollowing out local economies, with California among the clearest examples of the damage:

Key findings from the report include:

• California is one of the five states most reliant on immigrant labor. 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 recorded on building permits for new homes in those five states jumped 13.1 percent — from $304,312 to $344,112 — over the same period, compared to just 2.0 percent everywhere else.
• In the Western US region — 25 percent foreign-born in its construction workforce — single-family home permits fell 10.4 percent and new-home prices rose 8.2 percent since the enforcement surge began.
• The San Diego area alone saw one of the sharpest enforcement spikes of any city in the Brookings surge-city dataset: monthly arrests there rose from an average of 31 to 693, a 2,148 percent increase.
• Los Angeles County businesses located near  nine ICE enforcement sites saw roughly 46,000 fewer customer visits and an estimated $3.16 million in lost revenue within two weeks of a June 2025 enforcement surge, according to UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Institute. Nearly a year later, UCLA LPPI’s survey of Latino entrepreneurs across LA County found 95 percent still reported ongoing financial stress.

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 ending the mass deportations that are squeezing American families in every corner of the country.

Statement from Joanna Kuebler, Chief of Programs at America’s Voice:

“California families are paying the price for Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s mass deportation agenda. ICE arrests in San Diego alone spiking more than 20-fold. Construction jobs are slowing across the state at the exact moment California needs more homes built. Small businesses near Los Angeles enforcement sites are losing millions in revenue in a matter of weeks and entrepreneurs are still struggling to recover nearly a year later. It’s time to end the ICE tax and put California families ahead of a destructive policy that has driven up costs from the job site to Main Street. It’s time to end mass deportation.”

Read about the report in Spanish here.