Days away from President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, questions remain on his specific immigration policies, particularly his exact plans to carry out his promise of mass deportations.
If fulfilled, large-scale deportations could have a major economic impact in San Diego County and across California, where immigrants make up more than 27% of the population.
Trump and his allies have floated several policy changes, like deporting entire families of mixed status, as well as ending birthright citizenship. Many watching closely said they’re anticipating increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.
“We expect a much more hostile assault on our communities,” Benjamin Prado with the American Friends Service Committee said.
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Starting in 2016, Prado coordinated community patrols across San Diego under the first Trump administration to monitor ICE activity and inform residents of their rights.
“We saw them going into bakeries, into the supermarkets, large slaughterhouses," Prado said. "And so the target is very clear: migrant workers."
“We expect that this is going to multiply, that we're going to see much more aggressiveness on behalf of immigration authorities,” he continued. “Yet we also anticipate that our communities are going to protect and defend our rights even more.”
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ICE said Friday that the agency was still operating under the current administration and directed any questions on policy changes to the Trump transition team, which did not respond to request for comment on their specific deportation plans.
During her confirmation hearing Friday, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem — Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security — laid out some of the administration’s key areas of focus.
"President Trump has been very clear that his priority is going to be deporting criminals. Those who have broken our laws and perpetuated violence in our communities,” Noem said. “That will be a focus that we need to tackle right away, and it'll be a big one. Beyond that, his next priority is going to be those with final removal orders."
“I think it’s hard to prepare,” said Kenia Zamarripa of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.
She said while it’s difficult to collect data on undocumented labor in the area, the impact is immense.
“It’s agriculture, it’s the hospitality industry, it's retail, you know, all those jobs that have been vacant, particularly after COVID as well, and that would have been harder to fill,” Zamarripa said.
She highlighted the potential deportations of individuals in the U.S. on certain kinds of visas, like investor visas, who may own or operate a business.
"If they go away, those jobs go away, their contribution to taxes goes away, their contribution to the economy goes away," she said.
Zamarripa added that migrants – undocumented or not – hold one out of every three jobs in California and a quarter of the spending power in San Diego.
“When you look at those numbers, that's when you can try to infer what is the economic impact of these mass deportations,” she said, noting it could have a big impact on an already strained labor market.
One major impediment to Trump’s agenda: the cost. The American Immigration Council estimated the price tag of a one-time, large-scale mass deportation effort would be at least $315 billion.
Even without specific plans ahead of the inauguration, Prado pointed to raids already taking place in Kern County this week as evidence of stepped up enforcement, but noted: none of this is new.
“We have to take them at their word because we've seen it in the past,” Prado said.
