President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign has caused the costs of groceries, homes and healthcare to rise and local economies to contract, according to a new report from the pro-immigration advocacy group America’s Voice.
The group deems those added costs the “ICE Tax” — a reference to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and on Wednesday released data, first shared with CNBC, putting dollar figures on the ways they say Trump’s policies are hurting the economy.
“Forcibly deporting hundreds of thousands of essential workers means extra dollars at the grocery checkout, the home that costs six figures more to build, the corner store that goes quiet after a raid, the job that disappears when a coworker never comes back to work,” Vanessa Cardenas, executive director of America’s Voice, said in a statement.
“Instead of working to bring costs down and make America more affordable, they’ve chosen a deportation machine that terrorizes our communities, hurts our businesses, and sticks every family with the bill,” Cardenas continued.
The report calls for Congress and the White House to end the “ICE Tax,” a messaging campaign launched three months before the 2026 midterm election, in which the cost of living and Trump’s immigration policies are both key issues.
In CNBC’s latest edition of the All-America Economic Survey, which polled 1,000 voters in early July, 60% disapproved of Trump’s handling of the economy. Immigration and border security ranked as the third-most important issue facing the country right now, according to respondents.
Trump in his second term has set an aggressive goal of deporting 1 million individuals annually. ICE last month took more than 46,000 individuals into custody for alleged immigration violations, a monthly record high under Trump, CBS News reported.
ICE has repeatedly come under fire this year for its aggressive tactics and after a series of high-profile killings at the hands of officers that prompted calls from Democrats and activists for reform. But in its latest report, America’s Voice makes an economic case for change within the agency.
Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, questioned the report’s findings and pointed the finger at President Joe Biden.
“Thanks to the Biden administration releasing millions of illegals into our country, rent increased, car insurance premiums skyrocketed, the quality of our health care and education declined, and wages dropped for American workers,” Bis said by email. “President Trump is ending the affordability crisis caused in part by the Biden administration’s open border policies by putting American citizens first.”
The Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, referred CNBC to a December 2025 post on X that says: “Want affordable housing? Help report illegal aliens in your area.”
America’s Voice analyzed 12 months of federal price data ended in June and found costs are rising fastest for foods whose production relies heavily on immigrant labor. The price of lettuce is up 32.1%; canned fruit has risen 7.9%; and fresh citrus and apples have spiked 6.3% and 7.1%, respectively. That all came as core inflation, which excludes food and energy, rose 2.6% in the same period.
The report notes there are other factors besides deportations contributing to higher prices, including weather and fuel costs.
“No single figure proves the case on its own. But category after category, the products and services that rely most on immigrant labor are the ones pulling away from the rest of the economy. That’s a cost with a cause, not a coincidence,” the report says.
In other sectors, too, the report doesn’t prove causality but identifies rising costs where immigrant labor is key.
Construction employment fell 1.3% in the five states most reliant on immigrant labor from the start of the second Trump administration through June, while it grew 3.3% throughout the rest of the country, the report found. In the Northeast, whose construction workforce is comprised of 23% immigrant laborers, new permits for single-family homes fell 23.5% from March 2025 to June 2026, while new home prices in the same region were up 15.4% between the first quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, according to the organization’s analysis.
Home healthcare, a sector in which 40% or workers are immigrants, has seen a 10.7% cost increase over the past year, the report found. And local economies are suffering.
America’s Voice cites a University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business study, published in May, which found that after ICE enforcement hits a metro area, spending lags 6.2% below normal levels and foot traffic hovers 2.7% below normal at the average business. That loss of business translates to 8.1 billion fewer customer visits and up to $14 billion in foregone spending in a single year, the Wharton report found.
“That is the ICE tax. It is not a line item anyone votes on or a rate anyone sets. It is the diffuse, compounding cost that lands on families when the government pours its resources into deporting workers instead of into bringing costs down: pricier groceries, a house that costs more to build, costlier care for aging parents, a shuttered bakery on the corner, a job site gone quiet,” the America’s Voice report says.
