The human and financial costs of mass deportations of undocumented immigrants in the US would be staggering. There are an estimated 11 million undocumented people in the US and a further 2.3 million who have been released into the US after crossing the border illegally during the Biden administration.
An analysis from the American Immigration Council estimates that deporting all of these people would cost nearly $968 billion over more than a decade, requiring 24 times the current detention capacity and more than 1,000 new immigration courtrooms. Mass deportations would also significantly impact America’s meat industry, which heavily relies on undocumented labor. Around 23 percent of workers in the meatpacking industry are undocumented and 42 percent are foreign-born, says Steven Hubbard, senior data scientist at the American Immigration Council. The meatpacking industry, with its roles in animal slaughter, processing, and packaging for human consumption, has one of the highest ratios of foreign-born workers of any industry in the US, says Hubbard. The industry’s reliance on undocumented labor has made it a target of immigration raids under previous administrations. In August 2019, immigration authorities arrested 680 people in raids on seven food-processing plants across Mississippi, just one of several rounds of raids targeting meatpacking plants during the previous Trump administration. Wages in the meatpacking industry are low, and conditions are dangerous. A 2018 analysis of data from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration found that amputations occur on average twice weekly across US meat plants. Some meatpacking companies also hire incarcerated laborers to work in their plants