President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on "Mass Deportation NOW!" His justifications for the necessity of this policy were easily dismissed by experts. New immigrants aren't behind a murder spree, aren't driving up crime rates, aren't eating our pets, aren't taking "black jobs," and—in many cases—aren't even here illegally. One area that is more difficult to assess, but also rarely mentioned by Trump: how mass deportation would affect U.S. government debt.
If Trump is looking for better intellectual cover for mass deportation, he could find it in a preelection report from the conservative Manhattan Institute (MI). Their report found that the influx of illegal immigrants since 2021 will add $1.1 trillion in federal debt over the lifetimes of the immigrants and that "mass deportations would significantly reduce the national debt over the long run." This conclusion was seemingly at odds with a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that found a big and growing fiscal upside to the recent influx of nearly $1 trillion over the next decade.
