💬 Discussion
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The Detention Buildout

The reconciliation law that Congress passed on 3 July 2025 gave immigration enforcement tens of billions of dollars on top of its budget, much of it for detention [1]. Republicans present it as the end of releasing people who are in the country unlawfully; Democrats call it a deportation machine that reaches families and citizens. The money runs for four years, and the number of people in detention has been rising since.

  • 65,765 people were held in immigration detention in July 2026, against roughly 40,000 before 2025 [2]
  • 7 in 10 of the people held had no criminal conviction of any kind [2]
  • 444,000 encounters at the southwest border in 2025, against 2.5 million in 2023 [5]

The proposal

Immigration detention and removals roughly double, paid for by the enforcement money in the reconciliation law.

The debate

Republicans argue that more detention space ends the release of people awaiting removal and that a removal order should mean removal. Democrats answer that the agency sweeps up people without criminal records, citizens among them, and splits families. The law passed both chambers almost entirely along party lines and was signed on 4 July 2025.

  • “Our immigration enforcement officers will get a boost from more manpower, resources, and detention space so that detained illegal aliens are not released back onto the streets like they were for the last 4 years.”

    argues for: Mike Johnson, Republican, Louisiana House floor, 3 July 2025

  • “Target violent felons all you want, Mr. Speaker. We support that. They should be deported, but why are resources being spent targeting 2-year-old American children?”

    argues against: Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat, New York House floor, 3 July 2025

The analysis

The Detention Buildout

1% of the weight is for, 99% against.

An argument's weight combines three questions: how big the effect is, how certain it is and how much the good at stake matters. The larger the slice, the more the argument weighs.

For

Against

The detention buildout is, on the current analysis, a poor measure, although the backlog it answers is real: more than a million people hold a removal order nobody has carried out.

Very likely worse

Very likely worse: Under the assumptions used, the proposal brings more than it costs in fewer than 1 of 100 model runs.

 Overall effect: very large

How strongly the proposal works overall, in five steps from very small to very large, comparable across all debates. The ring is always full, even when the overall effect is small; this step says how large it is.

Against the buildout, the analysis rests mostly on costs neither side put at the center. Johnson's case rests on not releasing people. The gains that should follow, less crime and better jobs for Americans, did not appear when a close twin of this enforcement ran nationwide. Two large items carry the result: the borrowed running costs, and the earnings people lose when sent where the same work pays a fraction. The families Jeffries spoke of weigh less than either, and even without the lost earnings the costs would outweigh the gains many times over.

In detail

All arguments

Arguments for3 arguments

Crimes not committed by people removed

0.09points

Three in ten people in immigration detention have a criminal conviction, and removing them takes them out of the population that might offend again. Whether large-scale interior enforcement actually lowers crime has been measured. It did not.

Value 9 · Safety from crimeImpact 0.05Plausibility 2
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Value

The stream is offences that do not happen: assaults, burglaries, thefts and the smaller number of serious violent crimes behind them. This site places safety from crime in the same class as life and health, one step below the top of it here because the great majority of what is prevented is property crime and lesser assault rather than killing. The people spared are not identified in advance, which is normal for a stream of this kind and does not lower its weight. What is counted is the harm to victims, not the cost of policing or of prisons, which sits elsewhere. The value is high because the stream is safety from harm by other people, set one step below the maximum because most of what is prevented is not violence against the person.

Impact

The buildout raises removals by roughly 350,000 a year above the level of 2024. About three in ten people in immigration detention have a criminal conviction, which gives 103,000 people a year with a record among those removed [2]. Not all of them would offend again: a reoffending rate of 15 percent a year is used here, in a range from 5 to 30 percent, which is at or below what is observed for released populations generally. That gives about 15,000 offences a year that do not happen. The average harm to victims across the mix of offences involved — mostly property crime, drug offences and lesser assault — is priced as if each cost about 17,000 dollars, in a range from 5,800 to 46,000. The result is a Normalised Impact of about 0.05 on the scale of this evaluation. This is what the mechanism would deliver if it worked as described; whether it does is the subject of the next paragraph. The Impact is modest even taken at face value, because the share of those removed with any criminal record is under a third and most of their offending is not violent.

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Removals a year above the 2024 level [1] 350,000 people a year
× Share with a criminal conviction seven in ten people in immigration detention have no conviction [2] 29.4 % 103,000 people a year
× Offences that would have followed in a year Setting, range 5 to 30 percent: at or below observed reoffending for released populations generally 15 % 15,450 offences a year
× Average harm to victims Setting, range 5,000 to 40,000 euro-equivalent (about 5,800 to 46,000 dollars): mostly property crime, drug offences and lesser assault 15,000 euro-equivalent each (about 17,000 dollars) 232 million euro-equivalent
÷ Normalised Impact scale of this evaluation 5 billion euro-equivalent a point 0.05
Score 0.05 Impact × 9 Value × 2 Plausibility ÷ 10 = 0.1 of 100

Plausibility

This claim has been tested at national scale and the test found nothing. Secure Communities checked the immigration status of everyone arrested by local police and was rolled out county by county between 2008 and 2013, which lets the counties that got it early be compared against those that got it late [3]. Across that comparison the programme had no observable effect on rates of homicide, rape, robbery or aggravated assault. The confounder that would otherwise dominate — that counties adopting early differ from those adopting late — is what the staggered rollout is designed to absorb, and reverse causation cannot arise because the order of adoption was set administratively rather than by local crime rates. The usual reply is that Secure Communities screened arrestees while the current buildout removes people who have already been convicted, which is a real difference and is why this argument is not scored at zero. But it is a difference in target, not in mechanism, and the mechanism is what failed the test. The Plausibility is low because a close twin of this measure ran across the whole country and the effect it is supposed to produce did not appear.

Evidence: Precedent · plausibility at most 8 Evidence of effect: Quasi-experimental · at most 8 Placement: Effect did not materialise · plausibility 1.5–2

Open: The current buildout is itself staggered across states and sectors. A comparison of crime rates in areas where removals rose earliest against those where they rose latest would settle it within two years and could carry P to 6, or take the argument out of the ledger.

Fewer people die attempting the crossing

0.07points

Encounters at the southwest border fell from 2.5 million in 2023 to 444,000 in 2025, most of it before the buildout. If some part of that fall is the signal that arriving now means being detained and removed, fewer people take a journey on which hundreds die every year.

Value 10 · LifeImpact 0.02Plausibility 3.5
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Value

The stream is lives: people who die in the desert, in rivers or in trucks while trying to cross, whom the rule deters from the attempt. It carries this site's weight for life, the highest on the scale. What is not counted is any benefit from the person's absence — their labour, their taxes, their use of services — because those are transfers or run the other way, nor the gain the person would have had from arriving, which is not booked on this page. A crossing that is not attempted is not a removal: what the people actually removed lose is a separate argument on the other side. Earlier versions put a fixed price on each crossing that does not happen, as a sign that the rule holds; that price had no source, and the only harm of an attempted crossing that is documented is the risk of dying on it. The value is the highest on the scale: what is counted are lives.

Impact

Encounters at the southwest border fell by roughly 2.06 million between 2023 and 2025 [5]. Almost all of that came before the interior buildout and is attributed to what changed at the border and in asylum processing; a tenth is attributed here to the interior signal, in a range from a thirtieth to three tenths if the signal works at all, which leaves about 206,000 attempts a year that do not happen. The border agency recorded 704 migrant deaths in fiscal year 2023 and calls the count incomplete [9]; against about 2.5 million recorded encounters that is roughly 0.028 percent, or one recorded death per 3,600 encounters. That is not the risk of a single attempt. Encounters count contacts rather than people, so a person caught twice appears twice; attempts that are never encountered are missing from the denominator, and deaths that are never found are missing from the numerator. The per-encounter ratio is used as the closest available rate, and the doubt about it sits in the range, whose upper end allows a risk per attempt nearly twice as high. That gives about 58 deaths a year avoided, each valued at this site's rate for a life, with a tenth added for the grief of the families. On the card that is about 0.02 points. Penalties at the border are shown to lower the chance that the same person is caught crossing again [10], but no study measures whether detention inland deters new crossings, so the share stays a judgment. The Impact is small: a few dozen lives a year, resting on a share of the fall in crossings that nothing measures.

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2,060,000 encounters a year
Fall in encounters at the southwest border
[5]
× 10 % Setting, range 3.3 to 30 percent if the interior signal works at all: almost all of the fall came before the interior buildout; no study measures inland deterrence of new crossings
206,000 attempts a year that do not happen
Share attributable to interior enforcement
× 704 recorded deaths ÷ 2.5 million encounters (FY2023) Border Patrol's own count, acknowledged as an undercount; encounters count contacts rather than people or attempts, so the ratio is a stand-in, and the doubt sits in the range
58 deaths a year
Recorded deaths per recorded encounter, standing in for the risk per attempt
[9]
× 1.4 million euro-equivalent × 1.1 (families) this site's rate for a life, plus a tenth for the grief of relatives
89 million euro-equivalent a year
Value of the lives
÷ 5 billion euro-equivalent a point scale of this evaluation
0.02
Normalised Impact
Score 0.02 Impact × 10 Value × 3.5 Plausibility ÷ 10 = 0.1 of 100

Plausibility

The mechanism is plausible and the timing is against it. The counterfactual would be an America that built the same border and asylum changes without the interior buildout, and no such comparison exists: everything changed within eighteen months of everything else. The fall in encounters is measured but cannot be apportioned, and the largest part of it predates the appropriation this measure spends. The chain has three links — enforcement inland, information reaching people considering the journey, decisions changing — and the middle one is exactly the sort that has been checked for other policies and often found weaker than expected, because information travels through smugglers with an interest in understating it. That check has not been done here. Reverse causation is not the issue; the confounder is, and it is unresolved because the border changes and the interior changes are the same eighteen months. There is also a counter-mechanism: enforcement can push crossings onto more remote and more dangerous routes, which is one more reason the effect may not appear at all. The Plausibility is low because the effect cannot be separated from everything else that changed at the same time, and the share attributed to this measure is a judgment with nothing behind it.

Evidence: Mechanism · plausibility at most 6 Evidence of effect: Mechanistic · at most 6 Placement: Chain open · plausibility 3–3.5

Open: Survey data on what intending migrants in Central America believe about interior enforcement, collected against the timing of the buildout, would put a number on the attribution share and could carry P to 6.

Removal orders that are carried out

0points

More than a million people in the United States hold a final removal order that has never been executed. An order nobody enforces is not a decision, it is a filing. Detention is what makes a person available on the day the removal happens.

Value 6 · Trust in institutionsImpact 0Plausibility 7
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Value

The stream is the correspondence between what the law says and what happens, which this site places in the class it uses for systems and institutions rather than in the constitutional core. It is not a claim that removal is good for anyone; it is the observation that a legal order routinely ignored costs something, and that the cost falls on every other order the same system issues. Nothing here weighs the interest of the person removed, which is counted on the other side. The value is not raised because immigration is a charged subject: what is priced is the enforcement of an adjudicated decision, the same as it would be for a tax assessment or a court judgment. The value sits in the middle of the scale, at the level this site uses for the working order of public institutions.

Impact

Without the buildout, a large share of people with a final removal order are never located; with it, roughly 350,000 more removals a year take place, most of them on orders already issued [1][5]. What the evaluation asked here is what goes wrong when such an order is not carried out, and the answer from the studies that could separate cause from coincidence is: nothing that is not already on this page. Public budgets gain or lose only through transfers, which move money between people rather than destroying it. The effect on the jobs of American-born workers runs the other way and is counted against the measure. Crime does not fall measurably when enforcement rises [3][8], and what remains of that channel is in the argument on crimes not committed. A fixed price per executed order, used until this version, had no source and carried more than two thirds of the case for the measure. The Impact is zero: the harm this argument claimed is either not found or already counted elsewhere.

Plausibility

That detention produces removals is close to a matter of definition rather than a prediction: a person held in custody is available on the day a flight leaves, and a person who is not held may not be. The counterfactual is the non-detained docket, where a substantial share of people ordered removed are never located again, and both the detained and non-detained outcomes are recorded by the agency itself [2][6]. There is no confounder to speak of in the link from custody to availability, and reverse causation does not arise because the decision to detain precedes the removal. What is not definitional is whether the extra 350,000 removals materialise at all: the agency has never removed at that rate, staffing takes years to build, and destination countries must accept the returns. That operational doubt is reflected in the range around the removal figure rather than here. What is entirely unmeasured is the second half of the claim — that executing orders strengthens the system's other orders — and without evidence for it the argument is excluded rather than priced. The Plausibility is high for the mechanical half of the claim and the number itself rests on a stated price, which is where the doubt about this argument belongs.

Excluded (axis = 0): Excluded on 24.09.2026 (booking rule ordnungsgut/1.0): an order being carried out is valued only through the concrete harm that follows when it is not, and the causal evidence finds none that is not already counted elsewhere. Taxes and benefits are transfers; the labour-market effect of enforcement runs against American workers and stands in con-3; the crime effect is nil and stands in pro-1 [3][8]; no effect on trust in institutions has been measured. The former fixed price per executed order had no source.

Evidence: Mechanism · plausibility at most 8 Evidence of effect: Definitional

Arguments against5 arguments

What the buildout costs to run

9.7points

Detention runs at about 220 dollars a person a day, and the estate is roughly doubling. Adding the officers, the transport and the contracts around it, the 2025 law gives the enforcement agency about 75 billion dollars on top of an ordinary budget of roughly 10 billion a year — close to 19 billion dollars a year more, for four years. The money is borrowed.

Value 5 · Public financesImpact 3.2Plausibility 6
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Value

The stream is federal money, priced at the middle of the scale like every other dollar on this site. Public money is not treated as cheaper or dearer than private money, and a deficit is not a harm on top of the spending — borrowing shifts who pays and when, and that shift is inside the dollar figure. What the money buys is counted in the three arguments above; this argument is the payment. That a large share of it goes to private detention contractors rather than to public employees makes no difference to the weight, since a dollar leaving the budget is a dollar either way. The value is the middle of the scale, the level this site uses for public money whatever it is spent on.

Impact

The 2025 law appropriated more than 170 billion dollars over four years for border and interior enforcement, of which about 75 billion goes to the enforcement agency and 45 billion to detention alone [1]. That money comes on top of the agency's ordinary appropriation, which was about 10 billion dollars in 2025 and continues alongside it; it is not a new total that replaces the old budget [1][6]. Spread over the four years in which it can be obligated, the addition is 18.75 billion dollars a year. The range around it runs from 10 to 20 billion dollars, set by how fast the estate actually fills and how much of the appropriation the agency can obligate before it lapses — a bed that is built and not occupied still costs money, and the daily rate of about 220 dollars a person applies only when it is [2]. The dollar carries the standard weight of one for public money. Not counted here is the border wall construction in the same appropriation, which buys something different and belongs to a different measure. The Impact is the second largest in this debate, after the earnings the people removed lose, and about fifty times the Impact of everything the buildout is credited with delivering.

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Appropriated to the enforcement agency over four years, on top of its ordinary budget [1] of more than 170 billion for border and interior enforcement 75 billion dollars
÷ Per year the money can be obligated until September 2029; the ordinary appropriation of roughly 10 billion dollars a year continues alongside it and is not deducted [6] 4 18.75 billion dollars a year
÷ In euro-equivalent Setting, range 9 to 17 billion euro-equivalent (about 10 to 20 billion dollars), set by how fast the estate fills and how much the agency can obligate before the money lapses 1.16 dollars to the euro 16.16 billion euro-equivalent
÷ Normalised Impact scale of this evaluation 5 billion euro-equivalent a point 3.23
Score 3.23 Impact × 5 Value × 6 Plausibility ÷ 10 = 9.7 of 100

Plausibility

The appropriation is a matter of statute, so the ceiling on this figure is not in question [1]. The counterfactual is the agency's ordinary budget before the 2025 law, which is published and which continues to be appropriated alongside the new money. What is estimated is how much of the money is actually spent within the four years, and here the doubt runs downward rather than upward: agencies frequently cannot obligate appropriations of this size on schedule, hiring at the pace assumed has never been achieved, and unspent balances carry forward. That doubt is reflected in the 10 to 20 billion dollar range. The one factor that could push the figure higher is that detention is more expensive per person than the planning rate when the estate is expanded quickly into temporary facilities, which has been documented. Nothing here depends on anyone's behaviour except the agency's own capacity to spend. The Plausibility is at the top of what a budget projection can carry: the money is appropriated by law, and only the pace at which it is spent is estimated.

Evidence: Projection · plausibility at most 6 Evidence of effect: Definitional

What the people removed lose

9.6points

A worker removed to Mexico or Central America does not stop working, but earns a fraction of what the same work paid in the United States. Over four years the buildout removes about 1.4 million working people, and that gap is the largest loss on this page.

Value 5 · Household budgetsImpact 4.3Plausibility 4.5
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Value

The stream is the earnings of the people removed: what they were paid for their work in the United States against what they can earn where they are sent. It is priced at the middle of the scale, like earnings anywhere on this site; it is not raised to the class for subsistence, although for some of those removed the fall reaches that far. What raises it above face value is the weight for where the money falls: their American earnings placed them in the second fifth of the income distribution, and the weight of that band is used, 1.5, although the much lower income after removal would justify more [5]. One income is counted once. Money they sent home is part of the same earnings and is not added for the families who received it, and the earnings of a removed parent are not counted again in the argument on the children. Nothing is counted for separation from family in the United States, for violence or persecution at the destination, or for the time spent in detention before removal, which is the argument on detention. The value is the middle of the scale, the level for household money, and the weight for the low incomes concerned carries it above face value.

Impact

Over four years the buildout removes roughly 1.4 million people who were working, 350,000 a year, and the loss builds up as they go: an average of about 875,000 people a year across the period without the earnings they had, the same count used for the American workers above [1][5]. What they earned is set at about 31,000 dollars a year, about 16 dollars an hour for a full year, in a range from 23,000 to 41,000 dollars. Comparisons of observably identical workers inside and outside the United States find that the same person earns several times as much in the United States, by a factor of about 2.7 at the median of 42 countries and up to 8.4 [13]. The share of American earnings lost on removal is set at 60 percent, the inverse of that median factor, in a range from 40 to 80 percent, which also covers people who later return and people who take savings or skills with them. That gives about 16 billion dollars of earnings a year, and with the weight for the incomes concerned a Normalised Impact of about 4.3 on this card. For comparison, the additional running costs of the buildout are 18.75 billion dollars a year. The Impact is the largest on this page, and it rests on two settings, neither of them measured for people who were removed.

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Working people removed, averaged across the four years the same count used for American workers in the argument above [1][5] 350,000 a year, building to 1.4 million by the fourth year 875,000 people
× American earnings per person Setting, range 20,000 to 35,000 euro-equivalent (about 23,000 to 41,000 dollars): about 16 dollars an hour for a full year 27,000 euro-equivalent a year (about 31,000 dollars) 23,625 million euro-equivalent a year
× Share of those earnings lost on removal Setting, range 40 to 80 percent: the inverse of the median place premium of about 2.7, measured on migrants and stayers rather than on people removed [13] 60 % 14,175 million euro-equivalent a year
× Weight for the incomes concerned the second fifth of the income distribution, where their American earnings placed them 1.5 21,260 million euro-equivalent a year
÷ Normalised Impact scale of this evaluation 5 billion euro-equivalent a point 4.25
Score 4.25 Impact × 5 Value × 4.5 Plausibility ÷ 10 = 9.6 of 100

Plausibility

The counterfactual is the same people still working in the United States at the enforcement level of 2024. That a removed worker earns less where they are sent is not in doubt; how much less is the open part. The place premium is measured on workers who stayed and workers who migrated, adjusted for observable skills and for selection [13], and the people removed differ from both: some have spent decades in the United States and return to labour markets they no longer know, some have skills or savings that help them, some re-enter the United States within a few years. No study measures the earnings of people removed against the same people not removed. Reverse causation does not arise. The counter-mechanisms — re-entry, savings, skills — work on the size of the gap, not on whether there is one, and sit in the range. The Plausibility is below the middle: the chain is short and closed, and the gap that carries the quantity is borrowed from comparisons of migrants and stayers rather than measured on the people removed.

Evidence: Mechanism · plausibility at most 6 Evidence of effect: Mechanistic · at most 6 Placement: Chain closed, unevidenced · plausibility 4–5

Open: Mexican and Central American household surveys record returnees and their earnings, and removal records name the year of return. Linking the two, or following returnees in the Mexican Migration Project, would measure the earnings gap for people removed and could carry P to 6.

Forty-five thousand more people held

2.1points

Immigration detention is civil, not criminal: nobody in it is serving a sentence. Seven in ten of the 65,765 people held in July 2026 had no criminal conviction of any kind. The buildout roughly doubles that number.

Value 9 · Basic rightsImpact 0.4Plausibility 6.5
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Value

The stream is liberty: months during which a person cannot leave a building, work, see their family except through glass, or make any decision about their own day. This site places that in the class it uses for the constitutional core, below life and health and above the working order of institutions. It is not counted here as a wrong — the detention is lawful and the people in it are subject to removal proceedings — but as a cost, in the same way that a lawful tax is a cost. That seven in ten of those held have no criminal conviction does not change the weight of a detention-year; it changes how the reader should understand the stream, and it is stated for that reason. The value is high because the stream is liberty, set below life and health because it is recoverable.

Impact

The detained population stood at 65,765 in July 2026 against roughly 40,000 before 2025, and the funded plan runs toward 100,000 beds [2]. An average of 85,000 held across the four years is used here, giving 45,000 more people in custody on any given day than under the enforcement level of 2024, in a range from 25,000 to 60,000. That is 45,000 person-years of detention a year. A year of detention is valued at the rate this site uses for every year a person spends without command of their own time: all 5,840 waking hours of it at the value of an hour spent under compulsion, which makes the year weigh as much as a year of life. Two statutes that put a price on the same thing bracket the figure. American federal law compensates wrongful imprisonment at 50,000 dollars a year, and German law at about 32,000 dollars a year. The result is a Normalised Impact of 0.36 on the scale of this evaluation. What is not counted here is the medical care, the transfers between distant facilities and the deaths in custody, each of which would be a separate stream and none of which has a figure good enough to use. The Impact is about a ninth of what the buildout costs to run, which is the ordinary shape of a detention estate: holding people is expensive and what it takes from them is not the largest part of the total.

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People held in immigration detention on an average day, above the 2024 level Setting, range 25,000 to 60,000: the plan runs toward 100,000 beds and 65,765 were held in July 2026 [2] 85,000 against roughly 40,000 45,000 person-years a year
× Value of a year in detention This site's rate for a year of deprivation of liberty: 5,840 waking hours at 6.85 euro-equivalent, the value of an hour under compulsion — equal to one year of life. Range 27,375 to 43,100 euro-equivalent (about 32,000 to 50,000 dollars): German compensation for wrongful detention (about 87 dollars a day) up to the American federal rate (50,000 dollars a year) 40,000 euro-equivalent each 1,800 million euro-equivalent
÷ Normalised Impact scale of this evaluation 5 billion euro-equivalent a point 0.36
Score 0.36 Impact × 9 Value × 6.5 Plausibility ÷ 10 = 2.1 of 100

Plausibility

That detention deprives people of liberty is not a causal claim requiring evidence; it is what detention is. The counterfactual is the enforcement level of 2024, and the detained population under both is published monthly by the agency and reconstructed independently from its own records [2]. The only estimated element is how full the estate runs across four years, and that carries a wide band because construction and staffing schedules slip. The number of people held with no criminal conviction — 46,436 of 65,765 in July 2026 — is a count rather than an estimate [2]. Where judgment enters is the price of a detention-year, and the wrongful-imprisonment rate used here is a legislative valuation of a different thing: compensation for a wrong, not the cost of a lawful deprivation. That is a real objection to the number and it is why the band is wide in both directions. Reverse causation does not arise. The Plausibility is above the middle: the count is measured and only the price of a detention-year is a judgment, which is where the doubt about this argument sits.

Evidence: Precedent · plausibility at most 8.5 Evidence of effect: Definitional

American workers lose jobs alongside them

1.2points

The intuition is that removing an unauthorised worker frees a post for a citizen. The largest study of a comparable programme found the opposite: employment and wages of American-born men fell where enforcement rose. Construction and child care were where it showed most.

Value 6 · OutputImpact 0.3Plausibility 6
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Value

The stream is output that does not happen: houses not built, shifts not covered, businesses that shrink because the people around a job disappear as well as the job's holder. It belongs to the class this site uses for economic systems and prosperity. What is counted is the production lost net of the time the displaced worker gets back, not their wage, which is a payment inside the economy rather than a loss to it. What the people removed themselves lose — the earnings they had here against what they can earn where they are sent — is not inside this argument; it is the next argument on the same side. The two do not overlap: this one counts output lost by people who stay, the other the earnings of the people who leave. The value sits in the middle-upper part of the scale, at the level this site uses for economic output.

Impact

Over four years the buildout removes roughly 1.4 million people who were working, 350,000 a year. The loss builds up as they go: 350,000 fewer workers in the first year, 1.4 million fewer by the fourth, an average of about 875,000 across the four years. Against an unauthorised workforce of about 8.3 million in a labour force of 168 million, that lowers their share of American employment by about 0.52 percentage points on average, 0.83 at the end of the period [5]. The measured relationship from the largest study of a comparable programme is that a one percentage point fall in the employment share of likely undocumented men goes with a 0.12 percentage point fall in the employment rate of male citizens [4]. Applied to the average that is 0.06 percentage points, or about 75,000 American-born men out of work in an average year, in a range from 25,000 to 200,000. What each represents in lost output, after subtracting the value of the time they get back, is put at about 26,000 dollars a year — half of a typical full-year wage in the sectors concerned. The result is about 2 billion dollars a year. The Impact is about a tenth of what the buildout costs and it runs in the opposite direction to what the measure is usually expected to do for American workers.

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Workers removed, averaged across the four years the loss accumulates: one year's removals are still missing in every later year of the horizon [1][5] 350,000 a year, building to 1.4 million by the fourth year 875,000 people
÷ Fall in the unauthorised share of American employment [5] 875,000 of a labour force of 168 million 0.52 percentage points
× Effect on the employment rate of male citizens the measured rate of exchange from the staggered rollout of a comparable programme [4] 0.12 0.06 percentage points
× Male citizens of working age 120 million 75,000 jobs
× Output lost per job, net of the time the worker gets back Setting, range 15,000 to 30,000 euro-equivalent (about 17,000 to 35,000 dollars): about half a typical full-year wage in the sectors concerned 22,500 euro-equivalent a year (about 26,000 dollars) 1,690 million euro-equivalent
÷ Normalised Impact scale of this evaluation 5 billion euro-equivalent a point 0.34
Score 0.34 Impact × 6 Value × 6 Plausibility ÷ 10 = 1.2 of 100

Plausibility

The counterintuitive direction here is the measured one. Secure Communities was rolled out county by county between 2008 and 2013, which allows early counties to be compared against late ones, and across that comparison employment of male non-citizens with at most a high school education fell about 7 percent while employment and hourly wages of American-born men fell as well [4]. The confounder that would otherwise dominate — that counties adopting early had different labour markets — is what the staggered rollout absorbs, and reverse causation cannot arise, because the order of adoption was administrative rather than a response to local employment. The mechanism the authors give is complementarity: construction crews and child care arrangements need all their parts, so removing one worker shrinks the work available to the others. Two limits apply. The current buildout is larger and faster than Secure Communities, and the relationship need not be linear that far out; and some low-skilled Hispanic citizens did gain employment as substitutes, which the aggregate figure already nets. The Plausibility is above the middle: the direction and the rate of exchange are both measured under a design that can support them, and what is extrapolated is the scale.

Evidence: Study · plausibility at most 8 Evidence of effect: Quasi-experimental · at most 8

Children whose parent is taken

0.72points

Several million American citizen children live with a parent who has no lawful status. When that parent is detained or removed, the child stays. What follows is documented: worse sleep, worse school results, and a household that loses most of its income overnight.

Value 9 · HealthImpact 0.2Plausibility 5
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Value

The stream is the health and development of children who are American citizens and who remain in the country after a parent is removed. It belongs to the class this site uses for life and health, one step below the top of it because what is lost is recoverable in principle. The children are identified individually rather than statistically, and their loss is not incidental to the measure but a direct consequence of it. The household's loss of income is not counted here: the earnings of a parent who is removed are inside the argument on the people removed, and counting them again here would book the same money twice. The value sits one step below the maximum: the stream is the health and development of children, and both can be regained.

Impact

The buildout removes roughly 350,000 more people a year than the 2024 level. A quarter of them have American citizen children in the household, averaging about 1.5 each, which gives 131,000 children a year who lose a parent to removal or prolonged detention, in a range from 60,000 to 250,000. What each loses is set at 0.15 quality-adjusted years in that year and the ones following, in a range from 0.05 to 0.4 — a figure built from what is documented about sleep, school attendance and anxiety in these households rather than measured directly. Across 131,000 children that is 19,650 quality-adjusted years a year. The household's collapse in income is not counted here; the removed parent's earnings are in the argument on the people removed. The Impact is the smallest on the contra side and still larger than the crime reduction the measure is meant to buy.

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Removals a year above the 2024 level [1] 350,000 people a year
× American citizen children in those households Setting, range 60,000 to 250,000 children [7] a quarter of removals × 1.5 children 131,000 children a year
× Quality-adjusted years each loses Setting, range 0.05 to 0.4: built from what is documented about sleep, school attendance and anxiety in these households rather than measured directly [7] 0.15 a year 19,650 quality-adjusted years
× Value of the years the value of a healthy life year used across this site 40,000 euro-equivalent each 786 million euro-equivalent
÷ Normalised Impact scale of this evaluation 5 billion euro-equivalent a point 0.16
Score 0.16 Impact × 9 Value × 5 Plausibility ÷ 10 = 0.7 of 100

Plausibility

That children are harmed when a parent is removed is documented in a substantial literature, and the direction is not seriously disputed. What that literature mostly lacks is a comparison that isolates the removal of a child's own parent. Studies that follow individual families compare children whose parent was removed against children in similar households whose parent was not, and the households differ in exactly the ways — prior encounters with enforcement, employment sector, neighbourhood — that also affect a child. Two designs come closer, and both measure enforcement around a child rather than the removal of that child's parent. Bellows uses the same staggered county rollout of Secure Communities as the labour market study and finds lower English scores for Hispanic students, and lower scores for Black students, where the programme was switched on, while cautioning that the timing may coincide with other county trends [11]. Heinrich, Hernández and Shero follow linked school and health records of children around a 2018 workplace raid in Tennessee and find a spike in absences, more exclusionary discipline and more diagnoses of depression, self-harm and substance use in the following year [12]. Both support the direction and show that the harm reaches beyond the households directly hit; neither measures the loss of a child whose own parent is removed, which is the quantity used here. Reverse causation does not arise: a child's school results do not cause a parent's removal. The chain from removal to lost income to worse outcomes is short and every link in it is visible, and the counter-argument that some families reunite abroad is answered by counting only children who remain. The Plausibility is at the top of the range for a claim whose steps are all visible and whose direction is supported by two quasi-experimental studies of enforcement around children, while the size for a child whose parent is removed has never been measured against a clean comparison.

Evidence: Mechanism · plausibility at most 6 Evidence of effect: Mechanistic · at most 6 Placement: Chain closed, unevidenced · plausibility 4–5

Open: The buildout is staggered across states and sectors, and school and health records are held at state level. Comparing child outcomes where removals rose earliest against where they rose latest would size this within three years and could carry P to 6.

How robust the result is

Under the assumptions used, the proposal brings more than it costs in fewer than 1 of 100 model runs.

gains more than it costscosts more than it gains

Each dot stands for 200 of the 20,000 model runs.

A year in immigration detention is valued at the rate this site uses in every debate for a year without command of one's own time. The American federal rate for wrongful imprisonment, 50,000 dollars a year, lies just above it. No price is set on a removal order that is carried out: an order counts only through the harm of leaving it unexecuted, and the studies find none that is not already on this page. The deaths avoided at the border rest on a share of the fall in crossings that nothing measures, set at a tenth. The earnings of the people removed rest on two settings, what they earned and what share removal takes, neither measured on people who were removed. So counted, the measure lies ahead in none of the runs; without the earnings argument it would still lie far behind.

Show the distribution of the model runs

20,000 simulated futures

Very likely worse · 0 %

In fewer than 1 of 100 simulated futures the proposal brings more than it costs.

No effect is known exactly; every argument has a range. The calculation draws a possible size for each argument from its range 20,000 times and counts how often the benefits exceed the costs.

Net effect in points per future. Left of zero the drawbacks outweigh the benefits, right of zero the benefits win. Eight in ten futures fall between −31 and −17 points.
Scale and assessment

Scale of this evaluation: Normalised Impact, unitless and calibrated to this topic. For comparison, one point here corresponds to about 5 billion euro-equivalent a year.

Size class:large

Effect very large (−120) · 1 % of the effect is positive

Areas show individual argument weights. The positive share of the effect nets out money transfers between the two sides; the probability of a positive net effect is determined separately.

How we score →

Review and sources

AI evaluation · not yet reviewed by a human

This evaluation was produced and sourced by an AI model; a human review is still pending. Figures and conclusions may still change. The review log is at the foot of the page.How review works →

Last reviewed by Claude Opus 5.5 · October 29, 2026 · 9× AI, not yet reviewed by a human
  1. October 29, 2026AI reviewClaude Opus 5.5record updated

    Page texts for the new page layout (draft G) with quotes from primary sources; numbers unchanged.

  2. October 21, 2026AI reviewClaude Fable 5.1record updated

    Money amounts in argument texts stated in dollars per style-en.md; scores, chains and balance unchanged

  3. October 20, 2026AI reviewClaude Fable 5.1record updated

    Summary and scale note rewritten to the style of 20 Oct 2026; numbers unchanged

  4. October 16, 2026AI reviewClaude Opus 5.5record updated

    Ranges added in quadrature for crime, costs, jobs and children; the deaths-avoided range now covers only the case where the interior signal works, since whether it works is already carried by the low Plausibility.

  5. October 14, 2026AI reviewClaude Opus 5.5re-scored

    Prüfbericht 11.10.: neues con-5 Einkommensverlust der Abgeschobenen (H12, Setzungen 27.000 € und 60 %, P 4,5), con-4 Literatur korrigiert (H11, Bellows 2019, Heinrich et al. 2023), pro-3 Todesfälle je erfasstem Encounter (H13); k 0,5 → 0,2; r 0,010 → 0,006.

  6. September 24, 2026AI reviewClaude Opus 5.5re-scored

    Regel ordnungsgut/1.0: pro-2 (10.000 € je vollstreckter Anordnung, ohne Quelle) mit zero_reason ausgeschlossen — kein kausal belegter Schaden des Nichtvollzugs; pro-3 auf vermiedene Todesfälle beim Grenzübertritt umgestellt (V 10, rund 89 Mio €); r 0,22 → 0,01, schlechter → deutlich schlechter.

  7. September 20, 2026AI reviewClaude Fable 5.1re-scored

    Neuer Anker freiheitsentzug-jahr (Julian 20.09.): Haftjahr 43.000 → 40.000 € (5.840 Wachstunden × 6,85 €, Band 27.375–43.100 €); con-2 i 1,94 → 1,8, Score 11,35 → 10,53; r 0,219 → 0,221 (schlechter, unverändert). Mechanik-Satz con-2 korrigiert (ein Neuntel statt ein Viertel der Betriebskosten, seit v2 überholt).

  8. September 14, 2026AI reviewClaude Fable 5.1re-scored

    Gesamtprüfung 08.09. umgesetzt: con-1 75 Mrd $ sind Zusatzmittel neben dem Jahresetat (i 8,4 → 16,16, k 0,5); con-3 Jobverluste auf Jahresmittel 875.000 statt Endstand (i 2,7 → 1,69); Scope-Satz zu Abgeschobenen gestrichen; r 0,28 → 0,22 (schlechter).

  9. September 6, 2026AI reviewClaude Opus 5First evaluation

    Created for the English side: crime and labour-market claims placed against the two Secure Communities studies; removal-order price pinned beside the balance.

Evaluations are produced with AI support and reviewed on a schedule for new developments; human passes are marked separately.How we review →

Show all 13 sourcesHide sources
  1. American Immigration Council: What's in the Big Beautiful Bill? Immigration and Border Security Unpacked. americanimmigrationcouncil.org
  2. Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: Immigration Detention Quick Facts. tracreports.org
  3. Cox and Miles, Journal of Law and Economics 57(4): Does Immigration Enforcement Reduce Crime? Evidence from Secure Communities. journals.uchicago.edu
  4. East, Luck, Mansour and Velásquez, Journal of Labor Economics 41(4): The Labor Market Effects of Immigration Enforcement. journals.uchicago.edu
  5. Migration Policy Institute: Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States. migrationpolicy.org
  6. Department of Homeland Security: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Budget Overview, Fiscal Year 2027. dhs.gov
  7. Migration Policy Institute: Large-Scale Deportations May Have Unintended Consequences. migrationpolicy.org
  8. Hines and Peri, IZA Discussion Paper 12413: Immigrants' Deportations, Local Crime and Police Effectiveness (2019). docs.iza.org
  9. U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-25-107548: Southwest Border: Border Patrol's Missing Migrant Program — 704 migrant deaths recorded in fiscal year 2023, acknowledged as an undercount. files.gao.gov
  10. Bazzi, Burns, Hanson, Roberts and Whitley, NBER Working Paper 25100: Deterring Illegal Entry: Migrant Sanctions and Recidivism in Border Apprehensions. nber.org
  11. Bellows, AERA Open 5(4): Immigration Enforcement and Student Achievement in the Wake of Secure Communities (2019). journals.sagepub.com
  12. Heinrich, Hernández and Shero, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 42(2): Repercussions of a Raid: Health and Education Outcomes of Children Entangled in Immigration Enforcement (2023). onlinelibrary.wiley.com
  13. Clemens, Montenegro and Pritchett, Center for Global Development Working Paper 148: The Place Premium: Wage Differences for Identical Workers across the US Border (2008). cgdev.org

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