‘Trump is… cravenly opposed to immigrants’: Trump’s mass deportation efforts cause alarm in farmers, construction workers

Trump’s mass deportation plan is shaping up to be one of the most controversial topics surrounding his presidency, as if the plan to roll back rights of women and minorities, the multiple felonies, and the rape conviction weren’t enough.

While the responses range from unbridled support to staunch opposition, they all share on thing in common: fear. While Trump has managed to drum up fear and hatred of migrants in his working class base, many blue collar workers are afraid of the real life consequences such a devastating plan would have on their businesses. Farmers across America are anxious about the future of Trump’s America. As reported by Reuters, farm industry groups across the nation are hoping that Trump spares their sector from his deportation agenda. According to estimates from the Department of Labor, nearly half of the nation’s agricultural workforce lack legal status—that’s 2 million people. While Trump promised to leave immigrants working in the agricultural sector alone during his first term (and barely honored it), Trump’s increasingly inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric has called his promises into question.

The construction sector is similarly ill at ease. According to Stan Marek, the CEO of a Houston based construction company, Trump’s deportation plan would “devastate the industry.” Marek believes that without migrants, the sector would lose half of its labor force. “We wouldn’t finish our highways, we wouldn’t finish our schools,” he went on, “housing would disappear.”

Despite Texas’ gung-ho anti-immigration stance, one that has led state governor Greg Abbott to spend over $148 million bussing migrants to other parts of the country in a tax-payer funded political stunt, Texas is deeply reliant on undocumented labor across multiple industries. In the larger United States immigrants contribute over $2 trillion to the nation’s GDP annually. According to the ITEP, undocumented migrants contributed nearly $100 billion worth in taxes to federal, state and local governments in 2022 alone.

Trump’s mass deportation plan, if allowed to go into full effect, will prove to be economically devastating. The logistics of removing over 10 million people, already deeply entrenched in United States’ economy and culture, will be nightmarish. The total cost will be an estimated $300 billion, and will likely be challenged in the nation’s courts for years, possibly decades to come. The gaping hole in the U.S. economy left by immigrants will only be widened by Trump’s equally disastrous plan for taxation and tariffs.

Whether Trump chooses to honor his promises to exempt immigrants in the agricultural and construction sectors from deportation or not, it is hypocrisy at its finest. Trump has claimed that immigrants are nothing but a disease that is “poisoning the blood” of the United States, a turn of phrase eerily similar to the rhetoric used by the racial purists of a certain nation in the 20th century, yet is equally willing to use migrants in order to appeal to corporations and shoulder the weight of the U.S. economy. He claims that immigrants contribute nothing of value to the nation, all the while benefiting off of. the value they create. While it’s indeed possibly that Trump is “cravenly opposed” to immigrants, it’s equally likely that he sees migrants as nothing but a political football he can use to score points with his the xenophobes in his base. Either way, it is the most vulnerable that suffer.