The “Shock and Awe” ICE Campaign and Its Impact on Wages
The Economic Benefits and Consequences of Mass Deportation
Related Articles: Countering Blue State ICE Interference, National Guard LA Deployment, Trump’s Travel Ban, and Trump vs Harvard.
ICE is taking an immigrant into custody. Source ICE.
Introduction
One Tuesday morning in June, the hum of the production line at Omaha’s Glenn Valley Foods suddenly gave way to chaos. Federal agents swarmed the meatpacking plant in a surprise immigration raid, herding stunned workers into the cafeteria. By the time the white buses pulled away, roughly 75 employees – about half the staff – had been taken into custody with their hands restrained. Company officials were left bewildered, insisting they had “followed the law” by using E-Verify. Outside, a few desperate onlookers even clung to a bus’s bumper and hurled rocks in protest as their friends and colleagues were driven off. In a matter of hours, the bustling plant was reduced to a skeleton crew and an eerie quiet.
Just two days later, however, an entirely new scene unfolded at Glenn Valley Foods. Every seat in the company’s waiting area was occupied by people filling out job applications – American citizens and legal residents eager to replace the deported workers. The swift influx of local applicants challenged the old trope that “Americans won’t do these jobs,” as dozens of hopeful hires (many of them Spanish speakers from the community) lined up for training. To lure this new workforce, the company quietly boosted starting pay, knowing U.S.-born workers could find safer work if the wages weren’t worth the grind. This Omaha turnaround is part of a broader national trend. President Donald Trump’s 2025 “shock and awe” immigration crackdown – a blitz of workplace raids and policies encouraging self-deportation – has driven hundreds of thousands of undocumented laborers out of the U.S. workforce. In their wake, wages have begun climbing for the Americans stepping in to fill the gaps. What began as a desperate bid to keep an Omaha meat plant running now stands as a vivid example of how a fierce enforcement campaign can reshape a workplace – and lift paychecks – almost overnight.
In early 2025, the Trump administration launched an aggressive immigration enforcement blitz – dubbed a “shock and awe” campaign – aimed at mass deportation and deterrence. Within hours of inauguration, officials rolled out a flurry of hardline policies, including large-scale ICE raids in communities and worksites across the country. The strategy was explicitly designed to spread fear among undocumented immigrants, with one historian noting “what we’re seeing… is shock and awe. It’s meant to terrorize” immigrant communities. This climate of intense enforcement was coupled with unprecedented measures to encourage “self-deportation.” In February 2025, DHS (under Secretary Kristi Noem) introduced a voluntary departure program via the CBP One mobile app, even offering $1,000 stipends and free transportation to those who agreed to leave the country on their own. The rationale was that voluntary exits would be more cost-effective and “dignified” than traditional removals, which cost taxpayers over $17,000 per arrest and deportation on average. Trump’s “border czar,” former ICE director Tom Homan, emphasized that while authorities cannot physically deport all 11–15 million unauthorized immigrants, strict enforcement can “send a message” that prompts many to leave on their own. Indeed, early signs suggested the tactic was working “as hundreds of thousands apparently already have” self-deported in response to the crackdown.
Evidence of Self-Deportation and Labor Force Effects
Flowchart indicating the self deportation process. Curtesy of Herman Legal Group
By mid-2025, data and reports indicated a sharp drop in the undocumented population and foreign-born workforce, consistent with large-scale self-deportation. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) – a think tank supportive of stricter enforcement – estimated that nearly 1 million unauthorized migrants have already left the U.S. voluntarily under Trump’s new program. CIS analysts compiled government and media data showing a steep decline in immigrant workers: The Wall Street Journal found the total immigrant population fell by about 773,000 in the first months of Trump’s second term, and The Washington Post reported that “more than a million foreign-born workers have exited the workforce since March” 2025. This exodus is remarkably large and rapid. For context, the Biden-era labor market had been buoyed by rising immigration – a 2024 Federal Reserve analysis noted that an influx of immigrant workers had “tempered wage growth” and cooled labor shortages in 2022–23. Now the reverse is happening: Trump’s enforcement “shock” removed a significant labor supply buffer in a matter of months. The impact can be seen in labor force statistics. Even though job growth continued in spring 2025, the overall labor force shrank. In May 2025, the U.S. employment-population ratio dipped by 0.3 percentage points (to 59.7%) despite a steady 4.2% unemployment rate, suggesting many workers simply disappeared from the job market. Immigration experts link this drop directly to undocumented workers departing – either leaving the country or retreating into the shadows – due to fear of raids and the new self-deportation policy. That being said the wage growth is small and the difference not noticeable on a graph.
Year over year wage growth: In contracts to the other analysis above, data from FRED indicates wage growth over the past year has not budged and has declined since Trump took office. Source FRED.
That being said, the number of formal removals by ICE also jumped – DHS reported 207,000 deportations as of June 11, 2025 – but voluntary departures far outnumber official arrests. Immigration hardliners argue this validates an “attrition through enforcement” approach: “DHS can’t arrest and deport 15 million illegal aliens, but if it simply enforces the law, many will get the message and leave on their own,” wrote CIS fellow Andrew Arthur. In other words, the “shock and awe” campaign’s true power is inducing self-deportation at scale, essentially a kind of labor force contraction by design. However, immigrant advocates warn this strategy carries human and economic costs. Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers union, reports farm laborers nationwide are “terrified” – many afraid to show up for work – under the constant threat of ICE sweeps. She urges Americans to consider the “human loss” in immigrant communities, as well as the sight of “crops rotting” in fields due to farmworker flight. In agriculture, an estimated 40% of crop farmworkers lack legal status, so the enforcement blitz has emptied fields and orchards in some areas. Similarly, other industries that rely on undocumented labor (from hospitality to meatpacking) have seen workers vanish virtually overnight. These departures set the stage for shifts in wages, which we examine next.
Wage Trends in the Wake of the Crackdown
Economists describe this as a classic supply-and-demand effect in the labor market. Removing a large pool of workers – virtually overnight – tightens labor supply and gives remaining workers more bargaining power, driving wages upward. For example, in the leisure and hospitality sector (restaurants, hotels, etc.), many immigrants took hard-to-fill jobs; their departure has forced those employers to hike hourly pay to lure U.S.-born workers. Early data suggest wage gains have been strongest in lower-wage occupations and industries where undocumented workers were concentrated. Construction is one such sector: roughly 34% of U.S. construction workers are immigrants (many undocumented), so the crackdown threatens to create severe labor shortfalls on job sites. A KPMG economic analysis warned in April 2025 that “immigration slowdowns risk deepening labor shortages, delaying projects and fueling wage inflation” in construction. In other words, builders should “brace for rising costs” as wages climb for the scarcer remaining workers. While higher wages are good for workers Likewise in agriculture, farms that lost crews to self-deportation have reportedly raised piece-rate pay and hourly wages in desperate attempts to hire replacements. However, higher pay alone cannot always compensate for the sheer drop in available hands – hence anecdotes of crops left unpicked despite wage offers increasing.
At the national level, wage growth in 2025 appears to be running above trend compared to recent years, coinciding with the immigration enforcement campaign. Besides the 0.4% jump in May, April and June payroll data also show solid earnings gains (though full second-quarter statistics are still being analyzed). Some economists caution that part of this wage growth reflects ongoing post-pandemic labor market tightening and inflation adjustments. Yet the timing and commentary from experts strongly tie the spring 2025 wage acceleration to Trump’s immigration policies. One think tank analyst described it as a “long-overdue recalibration of the labor market in favor of the American worker”, arguing that wage stagnation in certain blue-collar jobs was partly due to abundant undocumented labor keeping pay low. Now, with that labor pool contracting, wages are finally rising for jobs like farm picker, dishwasher, or drywall installer. On the other hand, some labor economists worry about the flip side: rising wages driven by labor scarcity can feed into higher prices and inflation, and even slow economic growth if businesses can’t find enough workers. They note that the U.S. economy still has millions of unfilled job openings; removing immigrant workers makes filling those jobs harder, potentially pushing wage inflation to an unsustainable pace. In short, while workers who remain may enjoy better pay, consumers could ultimately feel the pinch through more expensive goods and services.
Regional and Sector-Specific Impacts on Wages
Immigration population in cities by percentage. From Washington Post.
The wage effects of the “shock and awe” campaign are not uniform across the country; they vary by region and industry, depending on local reliance on immigrant labor. States and cities with large undocumented immigrant communities – such as California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Arizona – are experiencing some of the most significant labor market shifts. For instance, California’s huge agriculture sector (specialty crops, dairies, etc.) has been hit hard by farmworker departures. Central Valley farms reportedly have offered wage increases of 15–20% for field workers this spring, yet many growers still struggle to fully staff harvest crews. Similarly, in parts of the Midwest meatpacking industry, anecdotal reports indicate processing plants have raised starting wages to record levels to offset the loss of migrant workers. Construction and homebuilding hotspots like Texas and Florida are feeling a double impact: they were already short on skilled trade workers, and now the crackdown has removed a chunk of their workforce, forcing contractors to bid up wages. An analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City previously showed that states with greater inflows of immigrant workers had slower wage growth (due to eased labor shortages). We can infer that the reverse is now true – areas that saw an outflow of immigrants in 2025 are seeing faster wage growth and perhaps worker shortages. In border states and major cities, day laborer markets have thinned out and some restaurants and landscaping companies have raised pay or reduced services due to lack of staff.
Hispanic undocumented immigrant share in the US by profession. From Center for Migration Studies.
One concrete example is the home healthcare and eldercare sector, which in many urban areas heavily employs immigrant caregivers. Observers note that Trump’s deportation push is exacerbating an existing caregiver shortage, as many aides either left the country or left formal employment. Agencies in places like New York and Los Angeles have responded by boosting hourly pay for home health aides in an effort to recruit U.S.-born workers, but the workforce gap remains large. This illustrates that the wage increases sparked by the crackdown are often accompanied by service disruptions – higher wages alone cannot immediately fill the void of lost labor. Moreover, smaller communities and rural areas that depended on immigrant labor are feeling unique pressures. In some Midwestern towns, for example, manufacturing plants or food processors that employed many undocumented workers have had to hike wages to attract Americans from farther afield, or else scale back production. While those higher wages benefit the local hires, they also raise the business’s costs and sometimes prices for customers. Economists describe this situation as “tight labor market” dynamics intensified by policy: fewer workers chasing many jobs, leading to wage hikes, potential output slowdowns, and upward price pressure.
Expert Commentary and Outlook
Experts are divided on the overall impact of Trump’s immigration enforcement on wages. Supporters of the crackdown argue the early data vindicate the policy. CIS fellow Andrew Arthur points to the rising pay as a clear win for American workers – “with fewer illegal immigrants, businesses have had to raise wages to attract workers”, he notes, crediting the self-deportation program for this positive trend. Restrictionist think tanks and some populist economists have long claimed that reducing unauthorized labor would lift the pay floor for native-born workers in low-income jobs, and they see 2025’s wage gains as proof of that concept. They also highlight that labor force “churn” could open opportunities for historically disadvantaged groups (e.g. high school dropouts or formerly incarcerated citizens) to secure jobs at better wages than before. From this perspective, the “shock and awe” campaign is triggering a rebalance in the labor market: a short-term disruption that, in theory, should lead to a more tight-knit legal workforce with higher prevailing wages.
However, many economists and business leaders voice caution about celebrating wage spikes driven by mass deportation. They emphasize that correlation is not simple causation – wages were already on the rise in 2023–24 due to inflation and worker bargaining power. Sudden wage inflation can also have downsides: if wages climb too fast because workers are scarce, it can fuel overall inflation and even prompt the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates more aggressively. Analysts at the Urban Institute warned in early 2025 that mass deportations would worsen the nation’s housing affordability crisis, because the construction labor shortage would deepen and drive up building costs. Fewer construction workers means higher bids for their services, which means more expensive homes and delays in projects – a burden ultimately borne by consumers. Additionally, there is the human capital aspect: undocumented workers often have skills and experience in their industries (be it farming, masonry, or caregiving) that aren’t easily replaced overnight by other labor. Losing a million workers in a span of weeks “shakes up” entire supply chains and local economies, potentially reducing productivity. For example, in Alabama’s agriculture sector a decade ago, a strict immigration law led to labor shortages so severe that crops went unharvested and some farmers went out of business, despite offering higher wages to local workers. The current national campaign risks similar outcomes on a broader scale. Even Trump administration officials tacitly acknowledge the need for balance. Notably, President Trump has hinted at allowing some immigrants to return legally: he suggested that removed farmworkers “will come back as legal workers” under a future guest-worker program. This implies an understanding that U.S. farms cannot operate indefinitely without those workers, no matter how high wages go, and it foreshadows policy adjustments to mitigate economic disruption.
Conclusion: A Short-Term Wage Boost, Long-Term Questions
In summary, the evidence so far in 2025 shows that U.S. wages have risen in the aftermath of the “shock and awe” immigration enforcement campaign, and a significant factor is the contraction of the labor pool due to deportation and self-deportation. National average wages are climbing faster than in recent years, and analyses by outlets like The Washington Post explicitly link this to the mass exit of over a million immigrant workers. Many employers, suddenly facing labor shortages, have raised pay to compete for the remaining workers, which benefits those workers who can fill the jobs. This trend is especially pronounced in sectors like agriculture, construction, hospitality, and caregiving – industries that had relied heavily on undocumented labor and are now scrambling to hire. Self-deportation, which was one of the administration’s goals, appears to be real and substantial, and it is tightening the labor market in ways that put upward pressure on wages.
That said, the situation is complex. While American low-wage workers may be seeing pay increases, the broader economic impacts include strains on businesses, potential price inflation, and disruptions in services (from slower home construction to fewer farm harvests). Economists will continue to monitor whether these wage gains are sustainable or if they lead to an overheating of labor costs. Future policy adjustments – such as guest-worker programs or automation investments – could also influence how wages evolve. For now, the data-driven takeaway is that Trump’s immigration “shock and awe” campaign has, in the short run, achieved one outcome long debated in economics: by sharply reducing the supply of undocumented workers, it has “with fewer illegal immigrants… [forced] businesses to raise wages” for many jobs. Whether this labor market “shock” yields lasting benefits for U.S. workers or creates new challenges remains a subject of ongoing debate among experts.
Further Reading:
Migration Policy Institute – Policy Beat: Trump’s Second-Term Immigration Actions (Jan. 2025).
Democracy Now – “Shock and Awe”: Immigration Raids Begin… (Jan. 24, 2025) democracynow.org.
NPR News – Trump offers $1,000 incentive to migrants who self-deport (May 6, 2025) npr.org; Americans will feel impact of immigration enforcement on farms (June 13, 2025) npr.org.
Newsmax – Wages Rise Amid 1 Million Self-Deportations Under Trump (June 16, 2025) newsmax.com.
The Washington Post – Employment report analysis (June 2025) townhall.com.
KPMG Economics – “Construction in the Crosshairs: Trade and Immigration Policy” (April 2025) kpmg.com.
Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City – “Rising Immigration Has Helped Cool an Overheated Labor Market” (May 22, 2024) kansascityfed.org.
Urban Institute – “Mass Deportations Would Worsen Our Housing Crisis” (Feb. 25, 2025).
Center for Immigration Studies – Andrew Arthur blog op-ed (June 16, 2025) newsmax.com.
Townhall – “Illegals Out, Wages Up: The Quiet Labor Shift…” (June 16, 2025) townhall.com.
Additional news reporting from Axios, Forbes, NPR (Morning Edition), and others on sector-specific impacts.
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