The well-worn claim that immigrants “take American jobs” helped sweep the current administration into office last November. First deployed by the “Know Nothing Party” of the mid-nineteenth-century, this old chestnut has long been a staple of anti-immigrant politics. While studies show immigration strengthens the US economy overall, the broader gains are little comfort to low-wage workers who feel only precarity and downward pressure on wages. Donald Trump capitalized on these anxieties, as nativist politicians have long done, channeling them into resentment of immigrants rather than the bosses and policies driving exploitation.

On Inauguration Day 2025, the new administration wasted no time in declaring war on an imagined “invasion,” dispatching Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to conduct raids in communities around the country. By late July, arrests of immigrants had increased by 200–400 percent. The rhetoric of invasion has served to brand many immigrants as criminals for committing the act, still only a federal misdemeanor, of crossing without papers. Further, the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill this summer allots $165 billion to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over the next decade, funding a dramatic expansion of ICE into what amounts to a domestic army.

The question is whether these massive public expenditures on the war against immigrants help the economy. In short: no, they do not.