In Massachusetts, where immigrants hold 22 percent of all jobs, 148,000 jobs could be lost, including roles held by immigrants with work permits and US-born workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
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This culling of the workforce, alongside tariffs and other uncertainty, will cause the economy to contract, said Tarek Hassan, a Boston University economics professor who studies immigration. As more people are born or move into the United States, it creates a greater need for food, consumer goods, and other services, which means that new arrivals create their own jobs, he said. Removing those people means their jobs disappear, too, he said.
“If somebody is gainfully employed,” he said, “the economy is always worse off if you deport them.”
Some of the jobs undocumented immigrants have are ones American workers don’t want because they involve manual labor and low wages, employers say. At least half of Greater Boston’s housekeepers, janitors, painters, taxi drivers, nursing assistants, and cooks were born in another country, Boston Indicators data show.
If President Trump succeeds in his goal of carrying out the largest mass deportation in history, the loss of workers could hurt employers’ ability to generate revenue and potentially lead companies to shut down entirely, economists say. Over the next four years, these aggressive enforcement actions could lead to the loss of nearly 6 million jobs nationwide, according to the Economic Policy Institute — nearly half of them filled by American workers.
The threat of deportation could also drive more undocumented immigrants to work underground for lower wages, which could lead to more exploitation, advocates said.
In response to these claims, a White House spokesperson said in a statement that Trump is enforcing federal immigration law and ending the exploitation of temporary programs, noting that “there is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force.”
“Since President Trump took office, 100 percent of job gains have gone to native-born American workers,” spokesperson Abigail Jackson said.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics report showed a gain of just 73,000 jobs in July and sharply reduced the number of jobs added in May and June, suggesting that the economy has slowed considerably and leading Trump to fire the bureau’s commissioner.
Since March, the number of foreign-born workers has dropped by 1.7 million. The suspension of the refugee program and travel restrictions on 19 countries will also limit future labor supply by keeping more immigrants out.
The removal of immigrants is just one element of a massive economic shakeup under Trump, along with the loss of 37,000 manufacturing jobs since tariffs were rolled out in April, tens of thousands of federal workers fired, research grants revoked, and numerous rollbacks on unions, wage protections, and safety regulations.
Immigrant workers have accounted for more than half of US labor force growth over the last three decades, according to the National Foundation for American Policy, and losing any of them is a cause for concern, especially considering that the labor force participation of US-born workers has dropped slightly over the past year.
Some immigrants are being fired before their legal status is fully vetted.
At Logan Airport, immigrants with clearance to work in areas requiring Customs and Border Protection clearance started receiving letters in late April revoking their security seal. In all, about 80 people have lost their jobs as ramp workers, baggage handlers, and cabin cleaners, even though all of them were still authorized to work, according to their union, SEIU 32BJ.
Nationwide, about 600 airport workers have lost their jobs due to the changes in immigration policy, the union said. The impact so far has been limited, said local 32BJ leader Kevin Brown, but service is bound to decline as more workers are forced out.
“The net that [Trump officials] have cast, it’s so wide and so fraught with errors and generalities that it’s ended up in a disastrous employment issue,” he said.
Daysi Rocha Cruz had been making $20 an hour cleaning airplane cabins at Logan until she was fired in May. Cruz, 27, who is from Nicaragua, has a work permit valid through 2028, when her asylum hearing is scheduled.
The fact that she’s still authorized to work didn’t change anything, she said. One of the immigration lawyers she talked to told her: “Fighting with the federal government is like trying to fight a dinosaur,” she said in Spanish through an interpreter.
The health care industry is also feeling the effects of Trump’s policies. Providers who have been asked to verify the employment status of their workers have started laying off health aides. Without these vital workers staffing nursing homes and helping people at home, more patients will get stuck in hospitals, said Brett Lewis, a physician in Boston, and capacity problems will intensify.
“It’s going to lead to catastrophe,” she said.
If the hotel industry starts losing immigrants, employers will likely push harder for technology that could displace staff permanently, said Carlos Aramayo, the head of Unite Here Local 26, the hospitality workers’ union in Boston. The loss of foreign-born workers could also lead to a greater reliance on foreign guest-worker programs, which are ripe for abuse because workers’ legal status is dependent on employers.
“I don’t know if it’s even feasible to run this industry without first-generation immigrants,” Aramayo said.
In some sectors, the impact is already evident.
A workplace raid in early July decimated a Nebraska meatpacking company’s workforce after federal agents arrived at the factory door with a battering ram, leading to a nearly 70 percent drop in production.
“I’ve seen whole companies go under after a raid,” the company’s human relations director told The New York Times. “The supply chain stalls. Beef prices go up. Consumers pay more.”
Nationwide, construction and child care are expected to be especially hard hit by increased immigration enforcement, each shrinking by at least 15 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
So far, there haven’t been major disruptions reported in Massachusetts, but workers are more afraid to speak up than they used to be, said Noel Xavier, organizing director for the North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters. At a job site in New Hampshire, a group of immigrant workers owed about $150,000 is refusing to come forward because of the fear of deportation, he said.
“It’s harder for us to find out the exploitation that’s ongoing,” Xavier said.
The construction industry already has a 439,000-person nationwide labor shortage that has contributed to higher costs and project delays, said John Ferrante, chief executive of the Associated General Contractors of Massachusetts.
“If we have folks who have been here for 20 years and have developed the skills and expertise to perform a particular trade or craft, and all of a sudden they’re being deported or aren’t employable,” he said, “it could really hurt the industry now and may lead to a lack of confidence in hiring immigrant workforces in the future.”
Patricia Carbajal, a native of Honduras who works for an excavation company, is enduring the potential cancellation of her temporary protected status for the second time, following an ultimately successful court fight during the first Trump administration. If she loses her legal status, she’ll be forced to quit her job and move her US-born daughter to a dangerous country.
“Every single day you can see a body in the streets,” she said.
A judge in San Francisco recently extended TPS protections for Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua, but Carbajal, 47, who helped build the Encore Boston Harbor casino, is still worried: “If you have dark skin, you are on the radar.”
This story was produced by the Globe’s Money, Power, Inequality team, which covers the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston. You can sign up for the newsletter here.
Katie Johnston can be reached at katie.johnston@globe.com. Follow her @ktkjohnston.