ICE deportations will chip away at California’s economy, says new report

(KRON) — As the Trump administration continues its push to have Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents remove undocumented immigrants from all walks of life, a recent study finds in addition to the human impact that Californians will also have an economic price to pay. 

Many understand the human impact of the ramping up of ICE deportations. But these roundups are also starting to have a dramatic impact on the California economy.

“There’s a massive level of economic impact that can be expected if the federal government proceeds with deportations at a mass level, at the level that they’ve been talking about,” says Sean Randolph of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.

A report by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute says over a quarter of the state’s agricultural workforce is undocumented, and without them, the gross domestic product generated by them could drop by 14%.

“A 90-year-old woman who, with her husband, years ago, planted a 40-acre walnut grove, which they have tended for a long time. And a couple of weeks ago, ICE agents showed up and they took away all the workers,” claims Randolph.

Randolph says that crop will now go unharvested, as will others at California farms impacted by similar raids. The impact is not just to the workers and the farmers but those of us that buy those products.

“The pressure is going to be for prices to rise now that could be table grapes,” says Randolph. “Could be wine, it could be, certainly every kind of like almonds, walnuts, spinach, all the stuff we grow in the Central Valley, the Salinas Valley.”

The report also suggests the removal of undocumented immigrants takes away some 4.9 billion they pay in excise and sales taxes which will impact local economies and governments that provide services to everyone.

“We need to be concerned about retail businesses and restaurants at every level,” says Randolph. “A lot of them are still struggling coming out of the pandemic. And so, you take the revenue away from them, you’re taking sales tax away from city revenues. So again, it just cascades through the economy at various levels.”

Watch the full report from KRON4’s Dan Kerman in the video player above.