FILE – A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent is seen in Park Ridge, Ill., Sept. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley, File) Mass deportation is not just border policy. It is affordability policy — and more fundamentally, it is a restoration of the basic bargain between the American government and American families.
For the past half century, immigration enforcement typically has been treated as a border-security issue. It is a border security issue, but it is also, notably, an affordability issue for Americans and American families. Illegal immigration did not stop at the Rio Grande. The 15 million illegal aliens who violated our laws and set up shop in our homeland did not stop at border towns. Illegal immigrants traversed on to cities far from the border, to New York City, to Chicago, to Denver — to innumerable communities.
This mass migration means higher public costs, lower bargaining power for American workers, more pressure on rents and home prices, more crowded schools and hospitals, and more money diverted from citizens to subsidize people who had no right to enter the country in the first place — not to mention the effects of letting in hundreds of thousands of unaccounted for hardened violent criminals.
Deportation is not merely an act of law enforcement — it is a necessary step toward making America affordable again for the Americans who built it, pay for it, and deserve to inherit it. A country that taxes its citizens to subsidize lawbreaking has broken faith with its own people. The American Dream cannot survive a policy that imports chaos, subsidizes lawbreaking, suppresses wages, raises housing costs, and then asks young American families to pay the bill.
Mass migration does not just show up at the border. It shows up in rent, in down payments, in overcrowded schools, in hospital strain, and in city budgets.
A Federal Reserve study found that unauthorized immigration alone accounted for roughly 30 percent of house-price growth and 20 percent of rent growth in the average metro area between 2021 and 2024. That is not an abstraction — it is the difference between a young family that can afford a home and one that cannot. It robs our friends and neighbors of a dream. A dream talked about at kitchen tables across America.
As enforcement increases and that demand eases, so should the price pressure that has locked so many Americans out of the housing market. In particular, mass migration drives up housing costs and delays family formation for young families. The median age for first-time homebuyers has gone from 30 to 40 since 2010, and their median down payment for that first home is now over $40,000 — more than the median net worth of Americans under 35.
A nation that makes homeownership unreachable for its own young families is not only mismanaging markets but also failing to pass on an inheritance.
Couple that with these harsh facts: In the last 25 years, immigrants accounted for nearly three-quarters of all growth in the prime-age civilian labor force. Since 2019, native-born workforce has not grown at all. A larger labor supply may benefit employers who want cheaper workers, but it weakens the bargaining power of Americans competing in the same labor markets.
On top of that, it’s breaking state and federal budgets. While cheap immigrant labor is often touted as a plus for the American economy, the truth is that it’s a net drain. There’s research and data on the issue. Conservatively, the lifetime net fiscal cost to governments when factoring in benefits was $68,000 per illegal immigrant.
Best estimates place deportation costs at roughly $13,000 per removal. If you do the math, this means that deporting 10 million illegal immigrants would save American taxpayers at least $500 billion. That is money that should be strengthening American households, schools, hospitals, police departments and neighborhoods. It’s also worth noting that a recent White House economic report estimated that the U.S. is short 10 million houses.
The drain on federal and state budgets resulting from immigrants drawing government benefits is enormous. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that approximately half of all households headed by non-citizens use one or more welfare programs. For non-citizen households from Haiti, it is 65 percent. For those from Mexico, it is 67 percent. For those from Guatemala, it is 77 percent. And an astounding 89 percent of Somali households with children receive some form of government welfare.
New York City, Chicago and Denver are just a few of the U.S. cities that have experienced crises in social services and severe budget shortfalls in recent years resulting in large part from the “migrant crisis” — another name for the Biden administration’s refusal to secure our southern border.
Ironically, some of the “sanctuary cities” that have done their best to impede immigration enforcement — and whose citizens have paid the price in terms of degrading quality of life and collapsing services — seem oblivious to the reality that those very policies have brought them to the brink of fiscal ruin. In fact, some are only doubling down on the madness.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced just this month that the city would be handing out “wellness vouchers” to gay and transgender illegal immigrants — up to $500 per recipient to enjoy “self-care benefits” such as haircuts, massages, yoga, acupuncture and gym memberships — even though the municipality is facing a nearly $50 million annual deficit. The playbook for sanctuary jurisdictions is clear: public benefits for illegal immigrants, fiscal strain for citizens, and moral vanity masquerading as compassion.
It is not compassionate to make citizens finance their own dispossession.
Support for immigration enforcement and continued deportation efforts is not simply based on the recognition that the safety of our communities depends on removing the criminal aliens that flooded into the country during the previous administration. It is an essential component in a program to make family formation affordable again for Americans.
Deportations are not just about removing people who broke the law. They are also about restoring the basic bargain that American citizenship should mean something: safe communities, fair wages, affordable homes, solvent cities and a government that puts its own people first.
Eric Schmitt is the junior senator from Missouri.
Add as preferred source on Google Tags Chicago Denver federal reserve New York CityCopyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Comments: Link copiedMore Opinions - Immigration News
See All
Opinions - Immigration To fix birthright citizenship, declare a foreign invasion by Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), opinion contributor 18 seconds ago Opinions - Immigration / 18 seconds ago 
