Maria worked cleaning schools in Florida for $13 an hour. She received a paycheck of $900 every two weeks from her employer, a contractor. It’s not much, but it’s enough to cover the rent, electricity, cell phone and groceries for the house she and her 11-year-old son share with five families.
Everything was over in August.
When she showed up at work one morning, her boss told her she could no longer work there. The Trump administration ended the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program, which gave legal work permits to Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans like Maria.
“I feel hopeless,” said Maria, 48, who asked to remain anonymous about her ordeal for fear of being detained and deported. I have $5 in my account. I have nothing left.
President Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration has left foreign nationals like Maria out of work, shaking the U.S. economy and job market. And it comes as employment is already hurting amid uncertainty over President Trump’s tariffs and other trade policies.
Immigrants do jobs that most mainland-born Americans don’t do, such as cleaning houses, picking tomatoes, and painting fences, for less money. But they also bring the technical skills and entrepreneurial spirit that helped make the United States a world economic powerhouse.
President Trump has attacked immigration on both ends of the spectrum, deporting low-wage workers and blocking skilled foreign talent from coming to the United States.
And he targeted an influx of foreign workers to ease labor shortages and upward pressure on wages and prices at a time when most economists thought sky-high interest rates and a recession were necessary to curb inflation, a fate the U.S. avoided in 2023 and 2024.
“Immigrants are good for the economy,” said Lee Branstetter, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University. “We’ve had a lot of immigration over the last five years, so the spike in inflation hasn’t been that bad.” As many people expected. ”
More workers filling more jobs and spending more money also helps drive economic growth and create more job opportunities. Economists worry that President Trump’s restrictions on deportations and even legal immigration could backfire.
In a July report, researchers Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson of the centrist Brookings Institution and Stan Viger of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute estimated that the loss of foreign workers would mean a monthly increase in U.S. jobs.
Employment has already slowed significantly, averaging just 29,000 jobs per month from June to August. (The continued federal government shutdown has delayed the release of the September jobs report.) By contrast, during the post-pandemic employment boom from 2021 to 2023, employers added a staggering 400,000 jobs per month.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has lowered its forecast for U.S. economic growth this year from 1.9% to 1.4% and from 2.5% in 2024, citing the impact of President Trump’s immigration and trade policies.
“We need these people.”
Goodwin Living, an Alexandria, Virginia, nonprofit that provides senior housing, medical and hospice services, had to lay off four employees from Haiti after the Trump administration ended their work permits. The Haitians had been allowed to work under a humanitarian parole program and had earned promotions at Goodwin.
“That was a very difficult day for us,” CEO Rob Liebreich said. “It’s really disappointing to have to say goodbye to them and we are still struggling to fulfill our role.”
Liebreich worries that an additional 60 immigrant workers could lose their temporary legal right to live and work in the United States. “We need all the hands on deck,” he said.
Goodwin Living has 1,500 employees, 60% of whom are foreign nationals. Struggling to find enough nurses, therapists and maintenance staff. Liebreich said President Trump’s immigration crackdown is “getting even tougher.”
ICE crackdown
Trump’s immigration ambitions, aimed at thwarting “invasions” at the U.S. southern border and securing jobs for U.S.-born workers, were once met with skepticism due to money and economics. Chaos was necessary to achieve his goal of deporting 1 million people a year. But with the bill President Trump signed into law on July 4, and Republicans dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, his plan suddenly became a reality.
The law dedicates $150 billion to immigration enforcement, including $46.5 billion to hire 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and $45 billion to increase capacity in immigration detention centers.
And ICE agents under his authority have demonstrated a willingness to act quickly to defuse situations, even when their aggressiveness conflicts with other administration goals.
Last month, immigration authorities raided a Hyundai Motor battery factory in Georgia and detained 300 South Korean workers, releasing footage of some of them being chained. They have worked to get the plant up and running, bringing expertise in battery technology and Hyundai procedures that local American workers don’t have.
The incident infuriated South Koreans and ran counter to President Trump’s push to attract foreign manufacturers to invest in the United States. South Korean President Lee Jae-myung has warned that other companies in the country may also be reluctant to bet on the United States if their employees are unable to obtain visas quickly and risk being detained.
Send Medicaid recipients to the field
American farmers are among the president’s most trusted supporters.
But John Boyd Jr., who farms 1,300 acres of soybeans, wheat and corn in southern Virginia, said the migrant attacks and the threat are hurting farmers already struggling with low crop prices and high costs. And it’s the aftermath of President Trump’s trade war with China, which has halted purchases of U.S. soybeans and sorghum.
“ICE is here, rounding up these people,” said Boyd, founder of the National Black Farmers Association. “(Trump) says they’re murderers, they’re thieves, they’re drug dealers. But these are the people who do the hard work in this country that many Americans don’t want to do.
Boyd scoffed at Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ proposal in July to require U.S.-born people to meet work requirements imposed as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. “People from cities don’t come back to farms to do this kind of work,” he says. “It takes a certain type of person to bend over in 100-degree heat.”
The Trump administration has acknowledged that immigration crackdowns are creating labor shortages on farms, which could lead to higher prices at supermarkets.
“The near-total cessation of the flow of illegal aliens, combined with the lack of available legal labor, has resulted in significant disruptions to production costs and (threaten) domestic food production and price stability,” the Labor Department said in an Oct. 2 Federal Register filing.
“You are not welcome here.”
Jed Kolko of the Peterson Institute for International Economics said job growth has slowed at companies that rely on immigrants. Construction companies, for example, have cut 10,000 jobs since May.
“These are short-term effects,” said Kolko, a Commerce Department official in the Biden administration. “The long-term effects are more severe because immigrants have traditionally contributed more than their share in patents, innovation, and productivity.”
Of particular concern to many economists was President Trump’s sudden announcement last month that he would raise fees for H-1B visas, aimed at attracting hard-to-find skilled foreign workers to the United States, from a minimum of $215 to $100,000.
“The $100,000 visa fee is not just a bureaucratic cost, it’s a signal,” said Danny Bahar, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. “It tells global talent that you are not welcome here.”
Some have already started packing.
In Washington, D.C., one H-1B visa holder from India, a Harvard University graduate who works for a nonprofit that helps the poor in Africa, said President Trump’s signal to employers is clear: Think twice about hiring H-1B visa holders.
The man, who asked to remain anonymous, is already preparing documents to move to the UK.
“Unfortunately, the damage has already been done,” he said.
Associated Press reporters Wiseman and Salomon reported from Washington and Miami, respectively. Associated Press writers Hu Ting and Christopher Lugaber in Washington contributed to this report.
