No matter who wins in November, the working class—and especially undocumented workers—will lose. Both parties are falling over each other to strike the most anti-immigrant posture they can. Kamala Harris has been the face of the current administration’s messaging, telling migrants “do not come.” Meanwhile, Donald Trump is campaigning on a wave of mass deportations.

The Biden-Harris administration has been responsible for 4.4 million forced repatriations, more than the Trump and Obama administrations before them.

The issues that the working class faces are not due to immigrants stealing their jobs, causing crime, or using up resources. Even if the state somehow managed to keep all “unwanted” immigrants out of this country, nothing would fundamentally change about the struggles facing the broader American working class.

The Biden-Harris administration has been responsible for 4.4 forced repatriations, more than the Trump and Obama administrations before them. / Image: Joe Biden, Flickr

Far from “stealing” jobs from American workers, they do essential work that keeps the economy running, including backbreaking work in the agricultural, construction, and restaurant industries, often for incredibly little pay. For jobs with dangerous working conditions and labor violations, undocumented immigrants are a capitalist’s dream.

Someone dies on the job due to the boss’s neglect? Better not speak up or you’ll get deported back to the untenable conditions you had to flee from. You didn’t get paid the amount you agreed to after weeks of excruciating labor? The law and the state are on the boss’s side. Paying workers even lower wages than the minimum wage and being able to get them deported if they try to fight back or unionize is a great way to ensure mega-profits for the capitalists. And despite the media hysteria to the contrary, multiple studies indicate that immigrants commit less crime than US citizens—which makes sense given their precarious circumstances.

Now Trump is threatening even more massive deportations. If this were to be actually pursued, there would be social and political implications for all layers of society, not just the immigrants. Consider the millions of people who hit the streets during the George Floyd protests and in the mass movement for Palestine. If their neighbors and friends were forcefully removed from their homes, the government would risk a huge social explosion.

There is precedent for this in the recent past. In 2005 and 2006, there was a massive immigrants rights movement provoked by proposed legislation that would have criminalized immigration—Sensenbrenner Bill 4437. Millions of people poured into the streets across the US. They eventually called on all immigrant workers to go out on strike on May Day, to show the world what “a day without immigrants” would look like. This is the closest the US has come to a general strike in the post-WWII era.

The “day wIthout an immigrant” protests, on May Day 2006, are the closest the US has come to a general strike in the post-WWII era. / Image: Thomas Hawk, Flickr

There are over 8 million undocumented workers, accounting for roughly 5% of the US workforce. More than eight out of ten of these workers have been in the country for more than a decade. Let’s consider what it would actually look like for Trump to act on his threat to deport them en masse. In 2023, ICE spent $420 million on transporting and deporting 142,500 immigrants. By that measure, it would cost them over $3.2 billion just to cover transportation costs to deport one million immigrants. That’s not to mention the cost of hiring and training tens of thousands of ICE agents, building hundreds of new immigration courthouses and detention centers, enlisting an army of judges and support staff, feeding millions of detainees, etc.

Congress already spent $3.4 billion to detain a daily average of 41,500 immigrants in 2024. Scaling up mass deportations would increase these costs exponentially. How will that go over in a country where, according to figures from the USDA, 47.4 million Americans experience go hungry? Will they want to see tens of billions of dollars spent on violently removing their neighbors from their homes?

This could also create a rift in the ruling class, since the capitalists benefit immensely from immigrant labor. This would be tremendously destabilizing for the already strained social fabric of the US. After all, immigrant labor has so far kept the economy from slipping into recession and allowed the Biden administration to tout jobs added to the economy.

In a country where 47.4 million are hungry, Congress spent $3.4 billion to detain a daily average of 41,500 immigrants in 2024. / Image: Defense Visual Information Distribution Service

In any case, mass deportations will not stop others from trying to immigrate. The reason millions are forced to abandon their homes in the first place is the hell on Earth created by imperialist policies: austerity measures tied to IMF loans and US-backed armed conflicts, i.e., forces driven by the capitalist system. We don’t need to build a wall to keep immigrants out, we need to end imperialism in order remove the horrible conditions that compel refugee crises in the first place.

We see these vicious and racist attacks for what they are: culture-war lies. Immigrant workers aren’t responsible for our problems—the capitalists are! The means to provide for everyone exist. Instead, the capitalist state spends billions of dollars on wars in Ukraine, Israel, and to fund border walls and police departments. An internationalist workers’ democracy would harness the vast wealth of the Western hemisphere to provide for everyone living in the Americas—as part of a world socialist federation.