US experts warn of economic and social fallout from Trump's immigration policies

Experts at a Brookings Institution seminar on Tuesday examined the Trump administration's immigration policies, highlighting sharp declines in net migration and broader concerns about enforcement tactics that have drawn criticism for their effects on communities and the economy.

As protests in Minneapolis over a recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid continued to escalate and showed no signs of abating, President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy federal troops.

At the discussion, David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, detailed the scope of restrictions imposed in 2025, saying the administration reduced legal entries more than illegal ones and created more undocumented immigrants by terminating more legal statuses than the number of people it deported.

"They cancelled the parole programs. They ended the refugee program almost entirely. They banned one in five legal immigrants from abroad from immigrating here," he said, adding that administrative backlogs and weekly policy changes further slowed processing.

Wendy Edelberg, a senior fellow in economic studies at Brookings, explained the macroeconomic effects of negative net migration in 2025, estimating it ranged from minus 295,000 to minus 10,000.

"If you go from what was pretty strong immigration on net in 2024 to what we project, what we estimate for 2025 of negative net migration, you're going to have a massive swing in what's happening to labor supply in 2024 versus what's happening to labor supply in 2025," Edelberg said.

She described labor supply as a "speed limit" on employment growth, projecting that it will drop to about 30,000 jobs per month by the end of 2025, with potential negative growth in 2026, even at low unemployment. Edelberg projected consumer spending reductions of $40 billion to $60 billion in 2025, plus an additional $10 billion to $40 billion in 2025 to 2026, citing a "chilling effect" on immigrant spending.

"When you hear about Walmart knocking down its revenue numbers ... I think a lot of this is actually just less spending by immigrants," she said.

The economic strain Edelberg mentioned echoes reports of declining immigrant populations. Pew Research Center data show that the US foreign-born population fell from 53.3 million in January 2025 to 51.9 million by June, a 2.6 percent decline. A Washington Post analysis cited similar Brookings estimates, saying Trump's border closure and visa curbs contributed to the first net loss in over 50 years.

Kristie De Pena, director of immigration policy at the Niskanen Center, said that the administration took more than 500 actions in its first year, including 38 executive orders, representing 17 percent of all orders signed. "This executive has been extraordinarily active on immigration, and it's made only that much more extraordinary by the fact that Congress really hasn't been playing much of a role at all," she said.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration announced an indefinite suspension of immigrant visa processing for applicants from 75 countries, citing concerns that migrants from these nations are likely to rely on US welfare benefits. The State Department said the pause, effective Jan 21, targets countries including Brazil, Iran, Russia, Somalia and Haiti as part of efforts to prevent entrants who "take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates".

Enforcement has sparked local backlash, including Los Angeles County's unanimous vote on Tuesday to create "ICE-free zones", which bar federal agents from using county property for raids without permits. The move follows reports of escalating ICE operations, with arrests at jails and lockups rising from 350 per day in January 2025 to over 500 by August, often involving non-criminals.

At the same time, the protests that erupted in Minneapolis over a recent ICE raid have been escalating, sparked by intensified deportation operations that many residents viewed as overly aggressive.

yifanxu@chinadailyusa.com