Study: Trump's Immigrant Deportation Plan Could Cost Economy $600 Billion

A new study by conservative think tank American Action Forum casts some major doubt on the viability of Donald Trump’s undocumented immigrant deportation plan. According to the study, implementing the plan could shrink the U.S. economy by about 2.0 percent.

There are currently about 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States and about 6.8 million of those immigrants are employed. If those 6.8 million workers were removed from the economy, American Action Forum estimates that the resulting void would reduce private sector output between $381.5 billion and $623.2 billion.

Industries like farming, construction and hospitality would be hit particularly hard and could struggle to find legal Americans willing to replace illegal workers.

“The things Donald Trump has said are utterly unworkable,” Senator John McCain’s 2008 campaign economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin says of Trump’s deportation plan.

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“I saw that report and they don’t even have it right,” Trump said of the study on CNBC.

“We certainly don’t want to shrink the economy.”

The deportation plan is not the only one of Trump's plans that critics say would prove economically disastrous.
According to the Washington Post, Trump’s infamous border wall, which he claims would cost around $8 billion, would actually cost “at least $25 billion.”

Trump says that the wall would be paid for by reducing the $50 billion U.S. trade deficit with Mexico, an idea that Politifact says is illogical.