‘We can’t do without these people’: Trump’s migrant crackdown has businesses worried

27 June 2025 Share Save Natalie Sherman BBC News Share Save

AFP/Getty

At his 1,200-person cleaning business in Maryland, chief executive Victor Moran carefully screens new recruits to make sure they are authorised to work in the US. Even so, President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants is starting to chip away at his workforce. About 15 people have left his company, Total Quality, since Trump won a fight to strip immigrants from Venezuela and Nicaragua from temporary protections shielding them from deportation, he says. If the White House expands its efforts, it could cost him hundreds more of his workers, who rely on similar work permits and would be difficult to replace.

Similar kinds of concerns are reverberating at businesses across the US, as Trump’s deportation drive appears to pick up pace, threatening to choke off a supply of workers that is increasingly critical to the US economy. Nearly one in five workers in the US was an immigrant last year, according to census data. That marked a record high in data going back decades, up from less than 10% in 1994.

Trump has said he is targeting people in the US illegally, who account for an estimated 4% of the US workforce. His pledge to conduct mass deportations was a centrepiece of his campaign and an issue on which he drew widespread support, including many Hispanic voters. But White House efforts have been much broader in scope, taking aim at people in the US on student visas; suspending admissions of refugees; and moving to revoke temporary work permits and other protections that had been granted to immigrants by previous presidents. His administration has resumed raids at workplaces, a tactic that had been suspended under Biden. The actions threaten disruption to millions of people, many of whom have lived and worked in the US for years.

‘Stress on my mind’

32BJ SEIU Justino Gomez from El Salvador fears ICE will eventually deport him

“We are terrified,” says Justino Gomez, who is originally from El Salvador and has lived in the US for three decades. The 73-year-old is authorised to work under a programme known as TPS, which grants temporary work permits and protection from deportation, based on conditions in immigrants’ home countries. His employment, first as a dishwasher and line cook in a restaurant and now as a cleaner, helped him send an adopted daughter in El Salvador to school to become a teacher. But Trump has already taken steps to end the programme for people from Haiti and Venezuela. Mr Gomez, who lives in Maryland, fears El Salvador could be next. “Every time I leave home, I have this stress on my mind,” he tells the BBC, through a translator provided by his labour union, 32BJ SEIU. “Even when I go to the metro, I’m afraid that ICE will be there waiting to abduct us.”

Economic impact

Many of Trump’s actions have been subject to legal challenge, including a lawsuit over TPS brought by the SEIU. But even if the White House does not successfully ramp up arrests and deportations, analysts say his crackdown could weigh on the economy in the near term, as it scares people like Mr Gomez into hiding and slows arrivals. Growth in the workforce, which has been powered by immigrants, has already flattened since January, when Trump took office. As firms have a harder time finding workers, it will limit their ability to grow, slowing the economy, warns economist Giovanni Peri of University of California, Davis. A smaller workforce could also feed inflation, by forcing firms to pay more to recruit staff. If the policies are sustained, they could have far-reaching economic consequences, Prof Peri adds. He points to the example of Japan, which has seen its economy shrink as it keeps a lid on immigration and the population ages. “The undocumented raids are a piece of a policy that really wants to transform the United States from one of the places where immigrants come, are integrated and part of the success of society to a closed country,” he says. “Instead of an engine of growth, it will become a more stagnant and slow growing and less dynamic economy.”

AFP/Getty Trump has acknowledged disruption his policies are causing in key industries, such as farming

Many firms say it is already hard to find people to fill the jobs available. Adam Lampert, the chief executive of Texas-based Cambridge Caregivers and Manchester Care Homes, which provides assisted living and in-home care, says about 80% of his 350 staff are foreign-born. “I don’t go out and place ads for non-citizens to fill our roles,” he says. “It is the immigrants who are answering the call.”

Like Mr Moran, he said Trump’s moves had already cost him some workers, who had been authorised to work on temporary permits. He said he was also worried about the ripple effects of Trump’s crackdown on his business, which in some ways competes with undocumented workers employed directly by families to provide care. He said if those workers are forced out, it will drive up demand for his own staff – forcing him to pay more, and ultimately raise his rates. “We’re going to have incredible inflation if you scrape all these people out of the economy,” he warned. “We can’t do without these people in the workforce.”

At Harris Health System, a major hospital network in Texas, Trump’s policy changes have already led to the loss of some workers, says chief executive Esmail Porsa. He says training American workers to fill the jobs available in his sector would take years, given the rising needs. “As the population is getting older and we are clamping down on one viable source of current and future workforce, this issue will come to a head,” he says.

Update, July 3, 2025: The House passed the legislation—along party lines and without a single Democratic vote—that will rip critical health and nutrition programs for millions of Americans. Learn more about the bill’s devastating impact below.

An Overview of the Harmful Budget Bill

Senate Republicans passed a devastating budget bill that would slash Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP (food assistance) and strip coverage from 17 million Americans to pay for tax cuts that disproportionately benefit high income earners. Because both chambers must pass an identical bill for it to become law, attention then turned to the House. Lawmakers were aiming for final passage by July 4.

The Medicare Rights Center forcefully condemns this legislation and called upon the House to reject it. The bill would strip health coverage from millions, increase out-of-pocket costs, deepen poverty and food insecurity, and destabilize the entire health care system. Its rollbacks represent the biggest cuts to health care and food assistance in history, wiping out recent gains in coverage and outcomes. Older adults, people with disabilities, children, and families with low incomes would be among those most at risk and hardest hit.

The Bill Would Create Harms at an Unprecedented Rate and Scale

Cuts Medicaid by imposing harmful work reporting requirements, increasing enrollee cost sharing, making Medicaid harder to qualify for, enroll in, and keep; eliminating access for many lawfully present immigrants; reducing state financing options; and restricting state payments to hospitals, nursing facilities, and other providers.

Undermines Medicare by stripping coverage away from current enrollees, halting rules that would make nursing homes safer, and reducing beneficiary access to cost-assistance programs (the Medicare Savings Programs and the Part D Low-Income Subsidy) that make coverage, care, and prescription drugs more affordable.

Threatens ACA coverage by eliminating tax credits that help more than 22 million people buy marketplace plans, narrowing sign-up windows, and creating other barriers to enrollment, as well as changing eligibility requirements based on immigration status.

Slashes SNAP benefits by increasing red tape and shifting costs to states, putting food security and healthy eating at risk for millions of older adults, people with disabilities, and children. If states can’t make up for these massive new costs, they would have to cut SNAP eligibility or terminate the program entirely.

Direct Harm to Older Adults and People with Disabilities

Increases Medicare costs for low-income beneficiaries by eliminating key improvements that streamline access to the Medicare Savings Programs (MSP). The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects nearly 1.4 million low-income people with Medicare—more than 10% of the dually enrolled Medicare-Medicaid population—would lose their MSP coverage due to the rollback of these simplifications. This would undo years of progress in reducing health and financial insecurity among older adults and people with disabilities.

Lowers Social Security checks by forcing beneficiaries to pay higher Medicare costs. In 2025, without an MSP, enrollees would lose at least $185 per month (the cost of the Part B premium). These financial burdens would grow with time; annual Part B premiums are projected to reach nearly $2,500 in 2026 and more than $4,000 by 2034. Enrollees with very low incomes have even more at stake—they would lose MSP coverage of additional Medicare expenses, like deductibles and copayments. These costs would consume a significant share of limited beneficiary budgets: One case study found that an older couple living on an annual income of $21,000 would pay $8,340 more for Medicare next year.

Makes prescription drug coverage more expensive for low-income Medicare beneficiaries. People with MSPs are automatically enrolled in the Part D Low-Income Subsidy (LIS)/Extra Help, which helps them afford their Medicare prescription drug coverage. The Social Security Administration estimates LIS saves enrollees about $6,200 per year, a number that is likely to rise as drug prices do. Without MSP and its coordination with LIS, beneficiaries would be on the hook for those costs, too.

Imposes harmful Medicaid work reporting requirements by creating a job loss penalty that would apply to individuals up to the age of 64, putting coverage and care at significant risk. CBO finds that at least 5.2 million adults would lose Medicaid, including many who are working or should have an exemption, but who would nevertheless get tripped up by the requirement’s red tape. This provision would likely have a disproportionate impact on the 22 million Medicaid enrollees who are 50 or older, who face outsized barriers to steady employment as well as obstacles to compliance reporting, all while having no impact on overall employment rates.

Puts long-term care at risk by making it harder to qualify for Medicaid coverage and shifting costs to states. This is overwhelmingly likely to result in cuts to Home- and Community-Based Services (HCBS). The bill also effectively repeals the Nursing Home Minimum Staffing Rule, endangering the lives and well-being of thousands of people with Medicare by allowing inadequate nursing facility staffing.

Reduces ACA plan enrollment and affordability by failing to renew the premium tax credits that help more than 22 million people—including many older adults who are not yet Medicare-eligible—afford ACA marketplace plans. As a result, nearly 5 million adults ages 50 to 64 would face higher ACA premiums next year. Those who can’t pay will likely drop their coverage and become uninsured, leading to worse health and higher Medicare costs. Roughly 8 million people who would lose ACA coverage would remain uninsured.

Restricts Medicare and ACA eligibility by terminating Medicare coverage for many individuals with lawful immigration status who have worked and paid taxes in the US for decades. This is a dangerous precedent and a significant departure from current, longstanding policy, which recognizes eligibility for everyone who has paid sufficient Social Security and Medicare taxes. Many would have nowhere to turn for coverage, as the bill would also cut off their access to ACA tax credits. Federal law already restricts Medicaid eligibility for people with lawful status who do not have a green card, but the bill would go even further, penalizing expansion states for using state-only funds to cover noncitizens otherwise ineligible for Medicaid.

Paves the way for bigger Medicare rollbacks by ballooning the national debt. Doing so would trigger massive cuts to Medicare totaling nearly $500 billion. Rising deficits would further jeopardize Medicare’s long-term outlook by creating a funding hole that lawmakers could use as an excuse to pursue future program cuts.

Increases hunger and food insecurity by making significant cuts and changes to SNAP that would threaten access to needed food assistance for lower-income Americans. SNAP helps more than 40 million people purchase the food they need to build and maintain their health. About 10 million SNAP households include at least one adult age 50 or older. Slashing the program would lead to more poverty and worse outcomes.

Massive Coverage Losses and System-Wide Harm

Nonpartisan analysis confirms devastating coverage losses from the bill. The CBO projects roughly 17 million additional people would lose health insurance as a direct result of the bill’s policies. This includes people who are insured through Medicaid, the ACA, and Medicare. Those who maintained coverage would face more onerous administrative requirements, higher costs, reduced services, and less access to care.

Ripple effects on hospitals, providers, and communities from cuts to Medicaid and Medicare would jeopardize hospitals and health clinics—especially in rural communities—likely forcing facility closures, triggering job losses, and destabilizing local economies. These reductions would drive up health care costs for everyone, even people with private insurance.

Job losses across states would skyrocket rapidly. According to recent analysis, in 2029, the bill’s Medicaid and SNAP cuts would cost states $154 billion—18% more than they would save the federal government ($131 billion). Nationwide, 1.22 million jobs would be lost, and state and local tax revenues would drop by $12 billion. Cuts to Medicare and the Marketplace would further disrupt the economy and employment.

Less access to care and higher health risks would lead to more harm and suffering, more preventable deaths, increased reliance on emergency rooms, and worse health outcomes. Research consistently finds that people facing higher out-of-pocket costs for health care cut back on the care they receive, even if it is necessary for their health and safety. This leads to worse health, higher care needs, and more hospitalizations—effects that drive up costs for individuals and system-wide.

More preventable deaths would occur due to reduced access to affordable, high-quality coverage and care. Researchers estimate over 51,000 additional people would die each year if the bill is enacted. This includes 18,200 low-income Medicare-Medicaid enrollees who would lose MSP and LIS. Another 20,000 lives could be lost each year from disenrollments in Medicaid and Marketplace coverage and 13,000 from the rollback of nursing home staffing rules.

Public Opinion is Clear: Americans Oppose These Cuts

Polling consistently shows strong public opposition to the bill. Recent polling echoes previous findings that show widespread, bipartisan concern about cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, and fear that the bill’s policies would limit access to affordable health care and long-term care services. There is also broad opposition to exploding the deficit and cutting taxes for higher-income households. Although the bill’s proponents have obscured its details and impacts, those realities are breaking through—and the more people learn about what it does, the less they like it.

Congress is ignoring the will of the people. The reconciliation bill runs counter to public opinion and ignores the growing demand for stronger—not weaker—health coverage and nutrition assistance.

Here’s what you need to know about the Trump administration’s efforts to target immigrants:

Expanding deportations

The Trump administration is vastly expanding deportations across the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been instructed to meet a quota of 1,200 to 1,500 arrests per day. Raids are being carried out at workplaces and communities in cities and towns, big and small. People, including children, are now being detained at immigration court, at ICE check-ins, in front of courthouses and even schools.

Invoking the “Alien Enemies Act”

The Alien Enemies Act was previously used during World War II to force people of Japanese, German, and Italian ancestry into internment camps. Now, Trump is trying to use the act to immediately deport people without due process and in violation of their human and constitutional rights. Although the use of this law continues to face legal challenges, the administration has already sent hundreds of people to El Salvador and other places outside the U.S., where they are now incarcerated in inhumane conditions.

Revoking temporary legal status for over 1 million people

The Trump administration has canceled temporary legal status for over a million immigrants in the U.S., placing them at risk for deportation. Targeted programs include:

Temporary Protected Status (TPS)

TPS is a provision under which the government protects people from deportation from certain countries afflicted by natural disasters, war, or other dangerous conditions. To date,

The Trump administration has ended TPS for Haitians, Venezuelans, Afghans, Cameroonians, Hondurans, and Nicaraguans. Those decisions are being challenged in the courts. We anticipate that the Trump administration will try to end TPS for other countries, which will likely be met with more litigation.

CHNV (Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans) Parole Program

The Trump administration shut down a program that had allowed over 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to live and work legally in the U.S. The CHNV program let people from these countries come to the U.S. if they had sponsors and passed background checks, giving them two years of protection.

Student visas

The administration has revoked the visas of hundreds, possibly thousands, of international students in dozens of states. Many students with visas—and even green cards—have been arrested, detained, and either deported or threatened with deportation because of their political speech, particularly in support of Palestinian rights.

Creating a nationwide registry to target immigrants

As part of a new nationwide registry, immigrants as young as 14 are now being forced to turn over personal data and fingerprints to the federal government or risk being jailed indefinitely. People who aren’t citizens are now required to carry proof of their registration at all times, opening the door to racial profiling and civil rights violations.

The registry echoes racist registration systems from our past. The U.S. government forced people of Japanese, German, and Italian descent to register during World War II before sending many to internment camps.

Conducting raids in schools, hospitals, and other sensitive areas

The administration has ended a long-standing policy that discouraged ICE officers from entering or making arrests in schools, hospitals, places of worship, and other sensitive areas. Protected spaces where people seek help, worship, study, and exercise their basic civil rights, could now be targets for ICE raids. The policy change could also deter immigrants from getting the emergency help they need, sending their kids to school, or practicing their faith.

Implementing a new travel ban

The Trump administration has issued a new travel ban barring people from traveling to the U.S. from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. The ban also puts restrictions on people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela. The order expands on the racist Muslim and Africa ban implemented during President Trump’s first term. Read more.

Shutting down the U.S.-Mexico border

The administration has closed the Southern Border to people seeking asylum, effectively shutting out people seeking safety and opportunities in the U.S. Trump has also declared a national border emergency, allowing him to deploy more troops to the area and redirect more funds and resources to further militarize border communities.

In addition, the administration has shut down U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s CBP One mobile application, stranding people with existing appointments in Mexico. The app had previously allowed immigrants to schedule appointments at ports of entry—the only means for migrants to safely seek asylum. The administration has also reinstated the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their U.S. immigration court hearings.

Suspending refugee admissions

Trump signed an order to fully suspend the refugee program for at least four months. Thousands of refugees who had already been approved for admission—some already in transit to the U.S.—have been stranded in countries around the world. That includes hundreds of Afghans who assisted the U.S. during the war in Afghanistan and now fear for their lives.

Targeting local government and nonprofits

The Trump administration plans to use punitive measures—including withholding federal funds—against sanctuary cities and other localities and states to enforce its anti-immigrant agenda. These are jurisdictions that have declared that their local law enforcement and other institutions will not collaborate with ICE to deport community members. The administration has also directed federal prosecutors to investigate and even bring criminal charges against state and local officials who refuse to cooperate with ICE. This tactic has also been used to threaten nonprofits that serve immigrant communities, stripping them of funding to provide vital community services.

Attempts to end birthright citizenship

Through an executive order, the Trump administration is attempting to revoke citizenship from some U.S.-born children of immigrants. This right is protected by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. As of this writing, more than 20 states have already filed suit to challenge the order and uphold this fundamental right. More than one federal judge has already temporarily blocked the executive order, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.”

Federal agents patrol the halls of immigration court at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building on August 19, 2025 in New York City. Credit – Michael M. Santiago—Getty Images

I’ve spent decades listening to children—in border shelters, red-light districts, refugee camps, and quiet corners of the world where protection is often a whispered hope. Their voices have taught me to notice not just what laws say, but what they do. Especially when the law forgets what it means to be a child.

In the United States today, immigration policies are not just shaping borders. They are shaping childhood itself. Quietly and steadily, the architecture of enforcement has turned inward—into homes, classrooms, clinics, and shelters. Children, once protected as a special category under law, are now being drawn into systems of surveillance and detention. Some are alone; others live with a growing fear that by being with their parents, they may lose them.

Since January, new executive orders and enforcement memos have reshaped the U.S. immigration system. What emerges is a framework where children are not only overlooked, but repurposed—as tools of enforcement.

ICE now has access to personal data collected by the Office of Refugee Resettlement from its network of shelters—information that includes the names and locations of the adults who step forward to sponsor children. Those adults, often parents, siblings, or grandparents, are then fingerprinted, DNA tested and sometimes detained. For many families, the act of claiming a child now carries the risk of deportation.

As a result, sponsors are withdrawing. Children are waiting longer in shelters. Some kids, without anyone willing to come forward to care for them, are left adrift. They are no longer seen as children in need of care, but as links to unauthorized adults.

An internal ICE memo, titled the Unaccompanied Alien Children Joint Initiative Field Implementation, justified these actions as part of a strategy to prevent trafficking. But having advised the United Nations on anti-trafficking frameworks, helped rescue girls from brothels in India, and taught this very subject at New York University, I can say, this is not how we prevent trafficking. This is how we create the conditions for it.

Children who have fled danger, abuse, war, sex-trafficking, or forced labor, often arrive in the U.S. clinging to the hope of safety. When they learn that coming forward could expose their parents or relatives, many disappear into the shadows.

They drop out of school. They stop going to parks, clinics, and libraries. They stop asking for help. Cut off from services and trusted adults, they slip below the radar, into basement jobs, exploitative housing, and survival economies.

Children who are isolated, denied legal aid, and separated from family care are not protected from trafficking; they are primed for it.

Read More: The Long-Lasting Trauma of Family Detention Centers

The conditions we have created, months in shelters, the fear of claiming a sponsor, loss of school and safety, do not deter predators. They invite them. In some cases, deportation delivers children straight back into the hands of the traffickers they fled.

More than 600,000 unaccompanied children have entered the U.S. since 2019. Their stories vary. Some fled gang violence or forced labor, others came to reunite with a parent already here. But what they share is a legal system that, increasingly, treats them as a risk rather than refugees.

In recent months, family detention has resumed. Children now remain in federal custody for an average of seven months, while relatives weigh the danger of stepping forward.

In February, legal aid funding for unaccompanied minors was briefly suspended. Tens of thousands of children were left without lawyers. Even after services resumed, the disruption lingered. A missed court date, once a bureaucratic hurdle, is now enough to trigger a deportation order. Children, many of whom don’t speak English or understand the process, are left unrepresented, unseen, and unprotected.

This system doesn’t only affect those who arrive unaccompanied. It casts a shadow over millions of children already here.

Today, 18 million American children, one in four, live in households with at least one immigrant parent. Many of those parents may not have legal status, even if they’ve lived in the U.S. for decades. They raise children who recite the Pledge of Allegiance, play Little League, and win high school spelling bees. But these children now live with a double fear: that the country they call home may not protect them. That their very presence might bring harm to the people they love most.

A recent executive order sought to revoke birthright citizenship for children of undocumented or temporarily present parents. Though blocked by the courts, the signal was unmistakable: even those born here may no longer be safe.

Read More: Trump’s Attacks on Immigrants are an Attack on us All

It doesn’t have to be this way. U.S. law already contains the principles needed to protect children: due process, family unity, the best interest of the child. But those principles only matter when they are practiced in policy, in courtrooms, and in homes.

When we treat children as threats, we teach them to fear care. When we treat their families as liabilities, we unravel the very relationships that give children strength. What is lost in this system is not just safety. It is the sense of being claimed by a community, by a country, by the idea that a child’s worth is not measured by their paperwork, but by their presence.

Children are not enforcement tools. They are not risks to manage or data points to exploit. They are children. And in forgetting that, we risk losing something far greater than a policy debate. We risk losing who we are.

Contact us at letters@time.com.

(The Hill) — Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Todd Lyons said on Wednesday that the federal law enforcement agency will “flood the zone” with immigration agents in Boston after Mayor Michelle Wu (D) fired back at President Trump’s administration over the city’s sanctuary policies.

“We’re definitely going to, as you’ve heard the saying, flood the zone, especially in sanctuary jurisdictions,” Lyons said in an interview on “The Howie Carr Show.”

“Boston and Massachusetts decided to say that they wanted to stay [a] sanctuary. Sanctuary does not mean safer streets. It means more criminal aliens out and about the neighborhood. But 100 percent, you will see a larger ICE presence,” the acting ICE director told host Howie Carr.

Wu said on Tuesday that Boston will not “bow down to unconstitutional threats or unlawful coercion” from the federal government.

“The U.S. Attorney General asked for a response by today, so here it is: stop attacking our cities to hide your administration’s failures,” the Boston mayor said.

Her comments came after Attorney General Pam Bondi sent out letters to 32 state and local governments last week, known as “sanctuary jurisdictions,” including Boston, saying they could have their federal funding dismissed or face legal action if they do not cooperate with the administration’s immigration crackdown. Bondi set the deadline for a response from the city for Tuesday this week.

“We did Operation Patriot March, which yielded over 1,000 arrests, and now you’re going to see more ICE agents come to Boston to make sure that we take these public threats out that she wants to let go back in the communities,” Lyons said. “We’re going to keep making America safe.”

Boston enacted the Boston Trust Act in 2014, which bars local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement agents, particularly around arresting migrants in the country illegally who are on civil warrants.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to NewsNation.