Trump’s promise of mass deportations could devastate Nevada’s economy. Here’s how.

For a city like Las Vegas, which depends on immigrant labor across several industries, a mass deportation could hinder the local economy in a way similar to the pandemic, one expert said. 

Jessica Valencia Alvarez might not have been born in Las Vegas, but there’s nowhere else she would rather call home. 

Alvarez, 37, was born in Mexico City, but her family migrated to Southern Nevada in 1998, when she was just a child, and has lived here ever since. And after more than 20,000 rides and counting as a rideshare driver, Alvarez — or Yessi as she likes to be called — has learned the ins and outs of the valley better than most. 

Yessi is a firm believer that driving in a tourism hotspot like Las Vegas is a great way to connect with people from all over the world. So much so that in 2022, she parlayed her experience to launch two businesses: One as a bilingual tour guide for Spanish-speaking visitors to the Sin City, and the other as a community resource liaison for local Latino communities. 

“I’ve got two businesses, and one pays me and the other doesn’t,” Yessi told The Nevadan, laughing. “The one that doesn’t pay me is the one I am in love with.”

Like many passion projects, Yessi insists it’s for a greater good. 

“I just love to be with my community,” she continued, calling herself a sort of 4-1-1 for local Latino communities. “Nobody pays me for this, but I do this because it’s in my blood.” 

But like hundreds of thousands of other undocumented immigrants living in the US, Yessi’s pathway to citizenship has been in limbo for years. She is a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was first established under former President Barack Obama, and was nearly dissolved by Donald Trump’s administration before the US Supreme Court intervened (though a new challenge to the legality of DACA is pending in federal court). 

President Joe Biden has called on Congress to codify a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients, but a deadlocked House and Senate have been unable for years to come to a consensus. But even with no imminent plans for the 530,000 DACA recipients nationwide (including more than 12,000 that live in Nevada), the stakes of this year’s presidential election couldn’t be higher, Yessi said. 

Jessica “Yessi” Valencia Alvarez. (Photo: Courtesy)

“DACA changed my life,” she said. “It opened the doors to so many opportunities. But I’m not convinced it will ever get fixed.”

Vice President Kamala Harris has offered few details on the future of DACA since becoming the Democratic Party’s nominee, which has been frustrating, Yessi said. But the alternative is Trump, who has promised repeatedly that if elected to a second term, he would “carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.” Trump has offered virtually zero details about who will be deported, other than the objective of removing those living undocumented in the US. 

But what Trump has talked about in detail is how he would deploy the military as well as deputize local law enforcement to execute his plan, which was formally adopted as the Republican Party platform at last month’s national convention. Trump also has discussed building detention camps to process deportees, and said his administration could remove between 15-20 million people — greater than many estimates of undocumented immigrants living in the US. 

“I would be devastated, just because it would mean I see my community suffer,” Yessi said when asked about a possible second Trump presidency and his deportation plans. “Not only about what would happen to me, but what would happen to my daughter. She’ll be 18 and an adult, but she’s still young, you know what I mean?”

Many experts doubt such a mass removal could be realistically achieved, given the significant logistical, legal, and financial undertaking such an operation would entail. But one thing it causes for certain is discord that could upend life for people just like Yessi, said Stephen Miller, research director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at UNLV. 

“I view it as a political statement more than an economic statement,” Miller said. “To do that sort of activity would disrupt the economy in many unknown ways.”

How would Trump’s deportation plan affect Nevada? 

The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimates that roughly 168,000 unauthorized immigrants currently live in Nevada, two-thirds of whom are employed, predominantly in the construction, hospitality, food services, arts, entertainment, and recreation sectors.

Nevada state Sen. Edgar Flores (D-Las Vegas), a practicing immigration attorney, told The Nevadan that no matter your political affiliation, Trump’s lack of specificity for his immigration plan should raise serious concern.

“In Las Vegas, these lights stay on in great part because of our immigrant community,” Flores said. “It’s having such a xenophobic disconnect, that you’re incapable of understanding that, every day, you’re already relying on these individuals. They take care of your kids, they take care of your elders, they’re working construction — the most essential industries in our country are being contributed to by, and are benefiting, because of immigrant hands.” 

Deporting all of these workers would effectively rob Nevada of 7% of its current job holders at a time when employers are already struggling to find workers. Nevada had 92,000 available jobs as of July, but only 85,620 unemployed workers, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). 

The state’s existing labor shortages — which began during the COVID-19 pandemic — have allowed demand to outpace supply, keeping prices high and otherwise hindering the state’s post-pandemic economic recovery, Miller said. 

“Las Vegas has sort of lagged behind in coming out of the pandemic recession,” Miller said. “The labor market has been really tight, and immigrants add to the supply that may be needed at this point in time.”

Deporting a significant percentage of the state’s workforce for political purposes could fuel even higher prices. 

Miller told The Nevadan that while UNLV hasn’t studied what would happen if undocumented workers were removed from the region en masse, Trump’s plan, if actualized, could mirror the state’s economic woes at the height of the pandemic.

After nonessential businesses like casinos and resorts reopened in mid-2020, employers for years struggled to retain workers, Miller said. Federal and state pandemic aid programs like stimulus checks and prolonged unemployment benefits were designed to keep people home during the most dangerous days of the pandemic early on, but even once those relief programs expired, resort operators and other businesses found it difficult to attract and maintain workers. 

Some workers chose not to return to in-person work to mitigate the potential risk to their health, while other laborers were more selective and took that time to find new and often higher-paying jobs. 

At the same time, personal savings were largely up, meaning that people had extra cash to purchase goods and services, even as companies had no workers to produce them, Miller said. 

“We had a shortage of labor supply, which affects the supply of goods and services, and those were reduced,” Miller said. “Demand was increasing and supply was decreasing. And when you have those two factors together, prices are going to go up, which we saw.”

Nevada’s unemployment rate reached a record high of 30.6% in April 2020 and has remained above the US average since the onset of the pandemic. The state’s unemployment rate for July was reported at 5.4%, approximately 0.9 percentage points higher than national leverage, according to government data.

A mass deportation plan, coupled with Trump’s plan to increase tariffs (a tax imposed by one country on goods imported from another country — usually raising the price of that good) could create a similar effect, Miller said.

The potential effects wouldn’t just be confined to worker shortages and higher prices, either.  

Undocumented immigrants are a major source of tax revenue for the state and national economies. 

A recent study conducted by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) found that undocumented immigrants contributed at least $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022 — a number that would increase if they were granted formal work authorization. In Nevada, undocumented immigrants accounted for $507 million in 2022 tax revenue, the study found. 

Most of that $96.7 billion paid by undocumented immigrants nationwide — $59.4 billion — was paid to the federal government, with those dollars funding things like payroll taxes, Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance — all of which are programs undocumented immigrants do not have access to. Undocumented immigrants in 40 states also paid higher state and local tax rates than the top 1% of households, according to the study. 

(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

Immigration and civil rights

Trump’s plan would not only be a setback to Nevada’s economy, but following through on mass deportations would also require a systemic disregard for civil rights, Flores said. 

The Trump plan is reportedly rooted in a plan utilized by President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration in the 1950s, which sought to deport more than one million Mexican nationals. What resulted was an increase in racial profiling and even reports of American citizens being forcibly moved to Mexico. 

“We’ve seen in the past in the US, of individuals who were born in this country, but were misidentified and were deported,” said Flores. “When you talk about mass deportation, you remove the [balance] of the law, that notion of equality and justice, which is supposed to be above all humans. You remove that, and you put all of it into the discretion of the arresting human.”  

Flores said he believes conservatives would use a second Trump term to make other radical changes to the immigration system once thought to be impossible. Flores noted that conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation have proposed eliminating the practice of birthright citizenship, a tenant of the 14th Amendment that grants US citizenship to any person born in US territory. 

Trump and his campaign have tried to distance themselves in recent weeks from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a far-right policy guide designed for Trump, if he wins, to implement sweeping changes across much of the federal government. Despite that, approximately 140 former Trump campaign, transition team, or White House officials have worked on the project, including several members of his current presidential campaign team. 

“It’s crazy and it’s among the most irresponsible ideas that Trump has proposed, that they’re continuously pushing,” Flores said of the birthright citizenship proposal, stressing that it would upend programs like DACA.

Flores said he’s also concerned for another category of immigrants: Those who are today undocumented, but are otherwise eligible for certain forms of relief like permanent resident status. Project 2025 proposes shifting that discretion away from the immigration courts and consolidating authority under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

That would emboldened DHS officials to make decisions based on partisan political objectives rather than ensuring immigrants’ right to a fair trial, Flores said. 

“The only way you’re going to apply discretion through that genre of politics, of nepotism and authoritarianism, is by obviously being racist,” Flores said. “You’re going to see somebody that is Black or Brown or a little bit of a different tone of what they think could be an ‘average’ or ‘everyday’ American. And they’re going to start harassing them and bothering them for documentation. That’s what’s so terrifying about this.”

Continuing in limbo

Not knowing who will win November’s election, Yessi said she occasionally thinks about moving back to Mexico to start over anew. But even that has its complications. 

In addition to her businesses, Yessi is a single mom to her daughter Nathalie, who is 17. She also has two younger brothers who were both born in the US. Her parents are not yet citizens either, but Yessi’s father has worked as an electrician at the same company for more than 26 years, and it is the only job he’s known since arriving to the US, she said.

On one hand, Yessi still remembers the sense of sorrow that set in when Trump was elected in 2016. But with Nathalie maturing into a young adult, Yessi said she’s worked hard to lay down roots for generations to come. 

“Even though I’m not from here, I like to take care of where I live. This is where my daughter was born,” Yessi said. “She’s like a mini me. But there [in Mexico], I could just live my life without being worried.”

As Nathalie has gotten older, she too, has come to realize what’s at stake for immigrant families this November. For months, she’s been canvassing with the nonprofit immigration advocacy group Make The Road Nevada. 

Nathalie also told Yessi she’d be willing to enlist in the military as a way to move along Yessi’s citizenship claim through a process called Parole in Place. But even that isn’t a sure-fire solution, as who is eligible for the process is largely up to the discretion of federal officials. 

With limited options, Yessi conceded there isn’t much else to do other than wait and see. 

Others are almost assuredly going through the same. 

“Everybody should care about this,” Flores said. “Somehow, the idea that the existence of this country is going to be put on its head — even though this is how we built this country and this is how we’ve continued to improve this country, we’re now going to draw a line and say, ‘This is what America is, and this is what it’s not,’ and completely ignore the history of it all, it’s just absolutely crazy.”