How mass deportations would affect New Bedford’s economy

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President Donald Trump’s plan to deport undocumented immigrants could drag down New Bedford’s economy, local academics and immigrant advocates say. 

Undocumented immigrants make up an important share of the local workforce, they say — working in backbreaking, low-wage jobs, and spending their earnings at businesses in the city.

Immigration 2025 / Second in a series

“Wide-scale deportation, and decimating the labor force in so many different parts of our local economy, certainly would have an impact on everyone,” said Corinn Williams, director of the Community Economic Development Center.

Representatives of the city’s business community say they’re watching Trump’s policies, but they didn’t want to speculate about what may or may not happen.

“There’s definitely a concern that all of a sudden you could have people that make a good living removed from the economy,” said Mike O’Sullivan, CEO of the One SouthCoast Chamber of Commerce. “There’s a lot of unknowns.”

One in five residents of New Bedford, or about 20,000 people, were born outside the U.S, compared to one in seven nationwide, according to recent Census estimates. That includes immigrants of any legal status, including the city’s large Portuguese population.

There are no exact tallies of how many undocumented immigrants are here, but the Immigrants’ Assistance Center estimates there are about 10,000 such people in the city. The Migration Policy Institute estimates the total number in Massachusetts is 209,000.

Removing them would cause massive disruptions to the local economy, academics and advocates say: the city would lose an irreplaceable supply of workers and customers, and that could cause businesses to raise prices or leave.

The immigration surge has propped up the Massachusetts economy — otherwise, the state would be losing workers as they move away or retire, a Boston University study found. Immigrant labor is vital to the state’s economy, the study said.

The state’s population of international immigrants increased by about 90,000 from 2023 to 2024, according to a UMass Donohue analysis of recent Census data. That contributed to an overall increase in the state’s population, even as Massachusetts lost residents who moved away — state-to-state moves resulted in a population loss of 27,000 people.

“Massachusetts is much more reliant on immigrant labor and immigrant entrepreneurship than other states,” said Mike Goodman, a professor of public policy at UMass Dartmouth. “We are positioned to disproportionately feel the pain of these [immigration] policies.”

What do immigrants do in New Bedford’s economy?

New Bedford’s foreign-born population is a vital part of its workforce, academics and advocates said.

Undocumented immigrants in New Bedford tend to work in low-wage, low-skill jobs, they said, and these workers are spread across a broad range of industries. Many are construction workers, landscapers, restaurant workers, nursing assistants, cranberry harvesters, and cleaners.

In New Bedford, the country’s top-earning commercial fishing port, a significant number of undocumented immigrants process and package seafood on the city’s waterfront, advocates said.

“I’m always thinking of the fish houses,” said Helena DaSilva Hughes, president of the Immigrants’ Assistance Center. “That would be an easy target.”

Bob Vanasse, executive director of the seafood industry advocacy group Saving Seafood, disputed that claim. He said many large seafood companies are now using a federal tool to verify workers’ status.

“I don’t think the industry is at risk,” he said.

New Bedford Ocean Cluster Executive Director Jennifer Downing declined to comment. 

Many immigrants who are working without authorization still have state and federal taxes withheld from their paychecks, advocates said. Undocumented immigrants contributed hundreds of millions in tax dollars, advocates said, even though they aren’t eligible for benefits from Social Security or most of the safety net programs that their tax dollars help to fund.

Are immigrants taking jobs from U.S. citizens?

Fish cutters work in smelly warehouses, using dangerous equipment. Construction workers and landscapers do manual labor in the heat and cold. Dishwashers scrub dirty plates all night. Nursing assistants help patients eat, bathe, and use the bathroom.

“This is really hard work, and I really don’t think these jobs are going to be fulfilled by Americans,” DaSilva Hughes said.

Goodman, the UMass Dartmouth policy professor, pointed out that many of those jobs are available today, but U.S.-born workers are not leaping at the opportunity to fill them.

“American workers are only displaced by foreign-born workers when there are American workers available and willing to take on those jobs,” he said.

If immigrants were pushing American workers out of their jobs, the number of unemployed people might spike. But that hasn’t happened in New Bedford, even as immigration to Massachusetts surged in recent years. The average number of people unemployed in New Bedford fell from 4,625 in 2018 to 3,934 in 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The current immigration surge is not expected to slow wage growth for American workers over a long period of time, according to a Congressional Budget Office report from July.

The report found that wages will grow more slowly for workers who didn’t finish high school from 2024 to 2026, because immigration will increase the supply of workers for low-skill jobs. But that slowdown is short-lived, researchers said.

After 2026, the report projects that higher productivity triggered by immigration will slightly increase wage growth for workers who aren’t part of the surge.

“That increase in productivity boosts wage growth for all groups of workers in the longer term, more than offsetting short-term reductions in wage growth for some groups,” the report said.

The surge is expected to increase the country’s gross domestic product by 3% over the next decade, mainly because immigrants will increase the country’s population of workers and consumers. In other words, immigrants are expected to make the U.S. economy healthier and more productive.

Of course, the report was written before Trump was elected. Its authors acknowledge that policy changes could affect the trends.

In the meantime, immigrants have become scapegoats for Americans’ broader economic frustrations, Williams said.

“Part of the history and the tapestry of the city has been waves of immigrants who have reinvented and reinvigorated local communities, and to think that the most recent group of people are not part of that legacy is just really disappointing,” she said.

What would happen if a large number of immigrants are deported from New Bedford?

Large-scale deportations of undocumented immigrants would likely disrupt New Bedford businesses, academics and advocates said. But the exact impact on the city’s fishing industry is disputed.

The lack of labor would put New Bedford at a disadvantage compared to other ports, Goodman said, which could make it difficult for seafood companies to keep doing business here.

The effects of that downturn would ripple beyond seafood processing companies, he added. Local businesses that supply gas for fishing boats or repair nets would also suffer if the seafood industry shrank here, he said.

“When one piece in that supply chain breaks down, it disrupts everyone,” Goodman said.

But Vanasse, the seafood industry advocate, said the potential impact to the seafood industry has been exaggerated.

He said he had spoken to people close to the administration who told him they plan to target immigrants who entered the country illegally and have criminal histories — only a subset of the broader immigrant population.

“If that is what they do, I think suggesting that the seafood industry is on the verge of leaving New Bedford is absurd,” he said.

Still, experts said deportations could exacerbate existing staffing shortages in other industries.

“Everybody is short-staffed,” said O’Sullivan, the chamber of commerce CEO.

O’Sullivan said a deeper worker shortage could slow down the city’s manufacturing or increase waits at restaurants.

“But it’s not only the workers, it’s the customers,” said Lisa Knauer, a UMass Dartmouth anthropology professor who has studied the local immigrant population.

Immigrants spend most of their paychecks locally, she said. They shop at the grocery store, fill up at the gas station, and buy medicine at the pharmacy, Knauer said. That means New Bedford businesses could lose revenue if large-scale deportations happen.

Most immigrant households in New Bedford have mixed immigration status, advocates said. It’s common, they said, for a person who is undocumented to live with a partner who does have permanent residency and a child who is a U.S. citizen.

Removing some members of a household could increase financial pressure on the remaining members as they try to pay for rent and other necessities with less income, advocates said. And the economic pressure may extend beyond a single household, Williams said.

“The way that a lot of immigrant families survive over generations is networks of families, networks of households, that depend and rely on each other,” she said.

How would deportations affect the housing market?

New Bedford has a severe housing crisis — costs have skyrocketed in recent years because the supply of homes has not kept up with the city’s population growth. So, would removing a large number of people take some pressure off the market?

Academics and advocates are skeptical that mass deportation would lower housing costs, and there’s evidence it could deepen the housing crisis.

Undocumented immigrants tend to live in low-priced, low-quality units, and often aren’t in a position to complain about poor conditions, Goodman said. He doubted that Americans would be eager to move into the types of apartments most deported immigrants would leave behind.

Besides, he added, the recent surge in immigration is not a primary driver of New Bedford’s long-brewing housing crisis.

“I think our primary problem with regards to housing affordability is related to an inadequate amount of housing production over an extended period of time, rather than too many people,” Goodman said. “This is not the way to solve the housing problem.”

Deportations might open up some apartments, DaSilva Hughes said, but she agreed with Goodman that it would probably not make enough of a difference to lower prices.

Deporting workers might worsen the housing shortage because it reduces the supply of construction workers, a recent study found.

Knauer and Williams were concerned that deportation could cause foreclosures that will destabilize neighborhoods, exacerbating a problem New Bedford has struggled with since the Great Recession. Some undocumented immigrants have been in the country long enough to become homeowners, they said. Some landlords could face a sudden loss of revenue if their tenants are deported. 

How are immigrants responding to the threat of deportations?

Immigrants are anxious, advocates say. DaSilva Hughes is encouraging families to have a plan for what to do if one of them is deported.

“We’re preparing for the worst and hoping for the best,” she said.

Goodman said that rumors of enforcement action could cause immigrants to stay home from work, which would decrease productivity. But immigrant advocates said they aren’t seeing that yet, because immigrant families need the income to survive. 

But Trump’s deportation threats are already having a chilling effect on other economic activities, Williams said. The immigrants she works with are mainly going straight to work and coming straight home. “They’re not wanting to go out shopping or out for recreation,” she said.

Williams is also concerned that the chilling effects could make immigrant workers even more vulnerable to exploitation. Wage theft is rampant on the waterfront, she said. Immigrants are entitled to be paid for their work and they can submit complaints about wage theft to the state attorney general, Williams said, but they might be less likely to do that now.

Memories of the 2007 Michael Bianco Inc. raid, a large-scale U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation targeting a South End factory, are echoing in immigrant advocates’ minds. The community isn’t ready for another raid like that, DaSilva Hughes said.

“It’s a wound that has not healed,” she said.

Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org