Numerous and high-profile false narratives about immigrants’ reliance on public benefits, alleged fraud, and predisposition toward violent crime have enabled the Trump Administration and lawmakers to fund a mass immigrant detention agenda. Since January 2025, Congress and the administration have directed billions of dollars into recruiting more immigration agents, opening and staffing carceral facilities, and increasing the number of immigrant arrests and detentions. 

The narratives used to support these actions and policies repackage the same stereotypes and tropes that have enabled divestment from, and the mass incarceration of, Black people in the U.S. As such, we can view these actions by the federal government, complicit local governments, and private corporations as a means to profit from fear and separation by boosting the population of individuals subject to the horrors of imprisonment and enslaved labor. 

If the Trump Administration continues down their current path of targeting immigrants, private contractors stand to be among the principal beneficiaries, and the harms will ripple throughout families, communities, and the economy. 

Economic Disruption and Forced Labor
Federal officials have called for arrest quotas to fill newly built detention centers, but not because there has been a sudden spike in crime. Indeed, the number of immigrants in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody with no criminal convictions has skyrocketed since January 2025. For the first time, this population outnumbers those who have convictions and pending charges. The vast majority of people who have been taken into ICE custody over the past 18 months face an alleged civil administrative violation, not a criminal charge.  

More detainees means a larger captive labor force available for ICE’s “voluntary work program,” which supposedly offers opportunities for detainees to make money, stay out of trouble, and improve detention centers’ operations. However, labor programs within carceral facilities are inherently coercive, and reports indicate that immigrant ICE detainees are forced into intensive manual labor for as little as $0.13 an hour. This practice is aligned with the nation’s long history of economically exploiting incarcerated people. 

While providing forced labor, immigrants lack many of the labor protections available to traditional employees and lack the resources to draw attention to the injustices they face. Detainees are also at risk of experiencing medical neglect, inadequate food, and overcrowded, filthy quarters. This abysmal situation has led to strikes at detention centers across the country.

Cracking down on immigrants is in direct opposition to Trump’s promise of a  “golden age of America.” Ample research demonstrates that immigrants are less likely to commit crime;  increase the size of the labor force and gross domestic production, which positively impacts the economy; and contribute more taxes than they receive in public benefits. But while immigrant workers are crucial to stabilizing the economy, increased enforcement is causing a decline in the labor market and will inevitably restrict local and national economies. 

Taking a Page Out of the Mass Incarceration Playbook
What the Trump Administration and ICE are doing is not new. Increasing detention by targeting immigrant communities is part of a long history of unethically extracting profit from marginalized communities. 

Recent narratives around immigrant fraud, inflated public benefit consumption, and criminality mobilized to justify the actions of ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and the Department of Homeland Security mirror racist tropes about the “welfare queen,” inner-city violence, and inherent criminality of Black people. Those and other stereotypes were used to both legitimize restrictions on federal assistance programs that most affected working Black families and justify building the carceral infrastructure needed to fulfill “tough on crime” policy agendas. Even the images of immigrant parents being kidnapped and children getting pepper sprayed or tear gassed that have become common over the last year bear a striking resemblance to the media coverage that surrounds police killings of Black people.

To make matters worse, the Supreme Court has given law enforcement the green light to racially profile immigrants, thus enabling an environment of fear and risk that normalizes armed agents harassing people based on how they look and speak, what they are wearing, and where they work. Findings from a CLASP study on how current immigration operations have harmed  immigrant families and early education and child care providers corroborate the implementation of an immigration enforcement model based on discrimination and anti-Blackness. The study included interviews with immigrants and providers who compared the environment of heightened discrimination, risk, and fear they were navigating to the racism and police violence experienced by Black people in the U.S. 

Far-Reaching Consequences
The Trump Administration’s decision to greatly expand immigrant detention does more than remove immigrant workers from their jobs and families. It transfers public resources to the agencies and contractors that confine people while creating a captive population available to perform labor for nominal compensation. Consequently, immigrant communities bear the brunt of lost wages, family separation, care disruptions, and economic instability, while detention operators receive public resources and reduced operating costs. 

These impacts have spread far beyond industries predominantly occupied by immigrants. As of May 2026, over 668,000 jobs have been lost as a result of the chilling effects generated by anti-immigrant activities. The human cost is high as well. In addition to the thousands of lives that have been disrupted and hundreds of families separated, at least 52 people have died in ICE custody since January 2025. 

Investing in the destruction of immigrant communities is not a strategy for national safety nor economic security. Rather than financing a system that removes workers from local economies and their families and extracts value from them in custody, policymakers should invest in the conditions that allow families and communities to thrive, such as programs that help everyone afford the daily costs of living, like child care, nutrition assistance, and health care. Policies that support immigrants support us all.