Maria worked cleaning schools in Florida for $13 an hour. Every two weeks, she’d get a $900 paycheck from her employer, a contractor. Not much — but enough to cover rent in the house that she and her 11-year-old son share with five families, plus electricity, a cellphone and groceries.
TL;DR
- Trump administration's immigration enforcement actions are causing job losses and economic slowdown.
- Immigrants perform essential labor, and their departure creates labor shortages in agriculture and senior care.
- New legislation allocates significant funds for immigration enforcement, impacting skilled foreign workers and manufacturers.
- Economists warn of near-zero job growth and potential increases in grocery costs due to these policies.
In August, it all ended.
When she showed up at the job one morning, her boss told her that she couldn’t work there anymore. The Trump administration had terminated President Joe Biden’s humanitarian parole program, which provided legal work permits for Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans as well as Nicaraguans like Maria.
"I'm feeling desperate," stated Maria, 48, who asked to remain unnamed to discuss her experience due to fears of detention and deportation. "I've got no funds for purchases. My account balance is $5. I'm completely broke."
President Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration is throwing foreigners like Maria out of work and shaking the American economy and job market. And it’s happening at a time when hiring is already deteriorating amid uncertainty over Trump’s erratic trade policies.
Immigrants do jobs — cleaning houses, picking tomatoes, painting fences — that most native-born Americans won’t, and for less money. But they also bring the technical skills and entrepreneurial energy that have helped make the United States the world’s economic superpower.
Trump is attacking immigration at both ends of spectrum, deporting low-wage laborers and discouraging skilled foreigners from bringing their talents to the United States.
And he is targeting an influx of foreign workers that eased labor shortages and upward pressure on wages and prices at a time when most economists thought that taming inflation would require sky-high interest rates and a recession — a fate the United States escaped in 2023 and 2024.
“Immigrants are good for the economy,” said Lee Branstetter, an economist at Carnegie-Mellon University. “Because we had a lot of immigration over the past five years, an inflationary surge was not as bad as many people expected.”
More workers filling more jobs and spending more money has also helped drive economic growth and create still-more job openings. Economists fear that Trump’s deportations and limits on even legal immigration will do the reverse.
In a July report, researchers Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson of the centrist Brookings Institution and Stan Veuger of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute calculated that the loss of foreign workers will mean that monthly U.S. Job growth “could be near zero or negative in the next few years.’’
Hiring has seen a considerable slowdown, with an average of just 29,000 new positions monthly between June and August. (This is attributed to the ongoing federal government shutdown, September jobs report has been delayed.) In contrast, during the post-pandemic hiring surge of 2021-2023, companies were adding an impressive 400,000 jobs each month.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, citing fallout Trump’s immigration and trade policies, downgraded its forecast for U.S. Economic growth this year to 1.4% from the 1.9% it had previously expected and from 2.5% in 2024.
‘We need these people’
Goodwin Living, a nonprofit based in Alexandria, Virginia, offering senior housing, healthcare, and hospice care, was compelled to dismiss four employees from Haiti following the Trump administration's decision to revoke their work permits. These individuals had been permitted to work through a humanitarian parole program and had achieved advancements within Goodwin.
“That was a very, very difficult day for us,” CEO Rob Liebreich said. “It was really unfortunate to have to say goodbye to them, and we’re still struggling to fill those roles.’’
Liebreich is concerned that an additional 60 migrant laborers might forfeit their provisional authorization to reside and be employed in the U.S. “We need all those hands,’’ he said. “We need all these people.”
Goodwin Living employs 1,500 individuals, with 60% originating from abroad. The organization has faced difficulties in recruiting sufficient nurses, therapists, and maintenance personnel. According to Liebreich, President Trump's stricter immigration policies are "exacerbating the challenge."
The ICE crackdown
Trump’s immigration ambitions, intended to turn back what he calls an “invasion” at America’s southern border and secure jobs for U.S.-born workers, were once viewed with skepticism because of the money and economic disruption required to reach his goal of deporting 1 million people a year. But legislation that Trump signed into law July 4 — and which Republicans call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — suddenly made his plans plausible.
The legislation allocates $150 billion into immigration enforcement, dedicating $46.5 billion for the recruitment of 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and $45 billion to expand immigrant detention facility capabilities.
His empowered ICE agents have demonstrated a readiness to act swiftly and disrupt established norms, even when their assertive actions clash with other objectives of the administration.
Last month, immigration officials conducted a raid at a Hyundai battery facility in Georgia, apprehending 300 South Korean employees and releasing footage of some in restraints. These individuals were instrumental in establishing the plant's operations, contributing specialized knowledge in battery science and Hyundai protocols that were not present among the local American workforce.
The incident angered South Koreans and prompted ran counter to Trump’s push to lure foreign manufacturers to invest in America. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung cautioned that other companies in the country might hesitate to gamble on America if their employees couldn't secure visas quickly and faced detention risks.
Sending Medicaid recipients to the fields
America’s farmers are among the president’s most dependable supporters.
John Boyd Jr., a farmer managing 1,300 acres of soybeans, wheat, and corn in southern Virginia, indicated that immigration enforcement actions, including raids and the possibility of them, are negatively impacting farmers who are already struggling with low crop prices, elevated expenses, and the repercussions of Trump's trade dispute with China, which has stopped buying U.S. Soybeans and sorghum.
"You've got ICE out here, rounding these folks up," stated Boyd, who founded the National Black Farmers Association. "Trump claims they're murderers, thieves, and drug dealers, among other things. However, these are individuals who are in this nation performing difficult labor that a lot of Americans are unwilling to undertake."
Boyd dismissed U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ July proposal that U.S.-born Medicaid recipients could head to the fields would step up to fulfill work mandates enacted this summer by The Republican-led Congress. "Urban dwellers aren't returning to agricultural labor for this type of job," he stated. "It requires a specific kind of individual to stoop in sweltering heat."
The Trump administration acknowledges that its immigration enforcement measures are leading to agricultural labor deficits, which may result in increased grocery costs.
The Labor Department stated in an Oct. 2 filing with The Federal Register that "the near complete halt in the arrival of illegal immigrants, coupled with a shortage of legal workers," leads to substantial increases in production expenses and "jeopardizes the reliability of domestic food output and the cost of food for American consumers."
“You’re not welcome here”
Jed Kolko, affiliated with The Peterson Institute for International Economics, noted that job expansion is decelerating in sectors dependent on immigrants. For example, construction firms have lost 10,000 positions since May.
Kolko, an official with The Commerce Department under the Biden administration, stated, "Those are the short-term effects. The longer-term effects are more serious because immigrants have historically contributed more than their fair share to patents, innovation, and productivity."
A significant concern for numerous economists stemmed from Trump's abrupt declaration last month to increase the H-1B visa fee, intended for attracting scarce skilled foreign professionals to the U.S., from a minimum of $215 to $100,000.
“A $100,000 visa fee is not just a bureaucratic cost — it’s a signal,” Dany Bahar, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, said. “It tells global talent: ‘You are not welcome here.’’’
Some are already packing up.
In Washington D.C., one H-1B visa holder, a Harvard graduate from India who works for a nonprofit helping Africa’s poor, said Trump’s signal to employers is clear: Think twice about hiring H-1B visa holders.
The man, who requested anonymity, is already preparing paperwork to move to the United Kingdom. “The damage is already done, unfortunately,’’ he said.
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Wiseman reported from Washington and Salomon from Miami.
AP Writers Fu Ting and Christopher Rugaber in Washington contributed to this report.