The ICE Facts They Don't Want You Sharing at Thanksgiving
Quick Answer
ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) causes measurable harm to the U.S. economy, separates families with deep community roots, and disproportionately targets people with no criminal record. The majority of deportees are not convicted criminals. Undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes annually. Mass deportation would cost hundreds of billions of dollars and remove essential workers from every sector of the economy. The case against ICE is not emotional. It is numerical.
Let's talk facts.
Not vibes. Not talking points. Actual, sourced, documented facts about what ICE does, who it targets, what it costs, and what gets lost when the agency shows up in a community and starts taking people away.
We make a Chinga La Migra t-shirt and a Destroy ICE t-shirt. People occasionally ask us why. This post is the answer.
First: Who Actually Gets Deported
The public image of ICE enforcement is that it targets dangerous criminals. The data tells a different story.
According to ICE's own annual reports, a significant portion of people arrested and deported each year have no criminal conviction at all. In fiscal year 2023, nearly half of all ICE arrests were of people with no criminal record. Of those who did have a record, a substantial share were convicted of traffic offenses, minor drug possession, or other non-violent misdemeanors. The category ICE calls "criminal" includes anyone with any conviction, including a DUI from fifteen years ago.
The "violent criminals" framing is a political choice, not a statistical reality. ICE itself classifies people with civil immigration violations as "criminals" because entering the country without documentation is a civil infraction. That is how someone who has lived in the United States for twenty years, paid taxes, raised children who are U.S. citizens, and has never been convicted of anything gets counted in the "criminal" column when they are deported.
The actual murderers, traffickers, and cartel members ICE claims to be targeting represent a small minority of enforcement actions. The majority of deportations affect people who, by any honest standard, are not a threat to anyone.
The Economic Case Against Deportation
The argument that deporting undocumented immigrants is good for the economy does not survive contact with economists.
There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. They contribute roughly $11.7 billion in state and local taxes every year, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. They pay into Social Security to the tune of approximately $13 billion annually, according to the Social Security Administration, while being legally ineligible to collect those benefits. Read that again. They fund a retirement system they will never be allowed to use.
Undocumented workers make up the majority of the agricultural labor force in the United States. Estimates range from 50 to 70 percent of all farm workers. They are also heavily represented in construction, food processing, hospitality, and domestic care. These are not industries where labor can be easily replaced. When workers disappear, production slows, prices rise, and supply chains break.
The American Immigration Council estimated in 2017 that deporting all undocumented immigrants would cost the federal government $315 billion over 20 years. That figure covers detention, legal proceedings, and removal logistics. It does not include the economic output that disappears when those workers are gone. The Peterson Institute for International Economics found that mass deportation would reduce U.S. GDP by 2 to 4 percent. That is not a rounding error. That is a recession-scale contraction, self-inflicted.
Enforcement is also expensive in the immediate term. The average cost to deport a single person is over $10,000, covering arrest, detention, court proceedings, and removal. The United States spent over $8 billion on immigration enforcement in 2023. That money does not build roads, fund schools, or pay down debt. It is spent removing people who were contributing to the economy and replacing their labor with nothing.
What Communities Actually Lose
The economic numbers are significant. What they do not capture is what happens to a town when ICE shows up.
Immigrant communities, documented and undocumented, build institutions. Churches. Small businesses. Restaurants, construction companies, cleaning services, landscaping operations. Studies consistently show that immigrants start businesses at higher rates than native-born citizens. They are also more likely to employ people in their local communities. When an owner is deported, the business often closes. The employees, many of whom are U.S. citizens, lose their jobs.
Children are U.S. citizens by birth. When a parent is deported, those children face a choice that no child should face: leave the only country they have ever known, or stay and grow up without a parent. The Migration Policy Institute has documented hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizen children who have had a parent deported. The developmental and economic consequences for those children are severe and lasting.
Essential workers are not an abstract category. During the COVID-19 pandemic, undocumented immigrants were classified as essential workers at higher rates than any other group. They picked the food. They processed the meat. They cared for the elderly. They kept supply chains moving while others stayed home. They received no stimulus checks. They were ineligible for most government assistance. They worked anyway. Then enforcement resumed.
The Track Record of the Agency Itself
ICE was created in 2003. It is a young agency with an already substantial record of documented abuses.
The ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and the Department of Homeland Security's own Office of Inspector General have documented deaths in ICE custody, inadequate medical care, physical abuse, and conditions in detention facilities that fall below the agency's own standards. As of 2024, more than 250 people have died in ICE custody since the agency was founded. The majority of those deaths involved medical neglect.
ICE has been documented using racial profiling during traffic stops and workplace raids, targeting people based on appearance rather than any specific intelligence. It has arrested people at courthouses, hospitals, and churches, locations that were historically treated as sensitive and protected. It has deported U.S. citizens. Not undocumented immigrants. Actual citizens. Multiple documented cases exist of people born in the United States who were detained or removed due to ICE error.
The family separation policy implemented in 2018 resulted in over 5,500 children being separated from their parents at the border. Hundreds of those children were not reunited with their families for years. Some parents were deported before the children could be returned to them. A federal judge described the conditions of the detention facilities used during that period as unsafe and unsanitary.
The Argument They Make and Why It Fails
The standard defense of ICE goes like this: immigration law is the law, and enforcing the law is not optional. People who enter without documentation broke the law and consequences follow.
This argument has two problems.
First, entering the country without authorization is a civil infraction, not a criminal offense, for most people. It is in the same legal category as a parking ticket. The criminal framing is a rhetorical choice, not a legal one.
Second, the United States has always had discretion in how it enforces immigration law. Prosecutorial discretion, the ability to decide which cases to prioritize, is a standard feature of every law enforcement agency in the country. The question was never whether to have immigration enforcement. It was who to prioritize and how to treat people in the process. An agency can choose to focus on genuine threats to public safety. ICE, repeatedly, has chosen not to.
The choice to prioritize a grandmother who has lived here for thirty years over an actual criminal is a choice. The choice to arrest people at hospitals is a choice. The choice to separate children from parents is a choice. These are not requirements of immigration law. They are decisions made by an agency about how to use its power. And those decisions deserve exactly the scrutiny they are getting.
What You Can Do With This Information
You can share it. You can say it out loud. You can wear it.
The Abolish ICE collection exists because we believe the most effective thing a brand can do is help people say true things clearly. A shirt is not a policy paper. But it starts conversations, and conversations start with someone being willing to say what they actually think in public.
The facts about ICE are not hard to find. They are just not frequently repeated in contexts where people who disagree have to hear them. That is the gap. We are trying to close it, one shirt at a time.
Murder Apparel is an independent, husband-and-wife brand making spooky, political gear for people who give a damn. We donate to fight injustice and support communities in need. 500,000+ weirdos on Instagram. Come find your people.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it true that most deported immigrants are not criminals?
Yes. ICE's own data shows that a large percentage of people arrested and deported each year have no criminal conviction. Many who are classified as "criminal" by ICE were convicted only of traffic offenses or minor non-violent misdemeanors. Entering the country without documentation is a civil infraction, not a criminal offense, which ICE routinely conflates with actual criminal conduct.
Do undocumented immigrants pay taxes?
Yes. Undocumented immigrants pay an estimated $11.7 billion in state and local taxes annually, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. They also contribute approximately $13 billion per year to Social Security, a system they are legally prohibited from collecting benefits from.
How much does deportation cost the U.S. government?
The average cost to deport one person is over $10,000. The American Immigration Council estimated that a mass deportation of all undocumented immigrants would cost $315 billion over 20 years in enforcement costs alone, not counting the economic output lost when those workers are removed from the labor force.
What would mass deportation do to the economy?
The Peterson Institute for International Economics found that mass deportation would reduce U.S. GDP by 2 to 4 percent. Undocumented workers represent a majority of the agricultural labor force and large shares of construction, food processing, and hospitality. Removing them would cause immediate labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, and price increases across multiple industries.
Has ICE ever deported U.S. citizens?
Yes. Multiple documented cases exist of U.S. citizens who were detained or deported by ICE due to agency error. These are not rare allegations. They are documented, verified cases that have resulted in lawsuits and investigations.
Where can I find Chinga La Migra and Destroy ICE shirts?
Right here. Shop the Murder Apparel Activism collection for both designs and more. Available in sizes S through 4XL.
