County Executive Marc Elrich said it will be a “national economic disaster” once U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hires more people and ramps up deportations with increased funding under the federal budget in October.
Industries in Montgomery County like construction, restaurants, and hospitality depend heavily on an immigrant workforce, Elrich said during a media briefing Wednesday.
“We know that a lot of these folks are here and they’re not documented, they’re not sufficiently documented, and if the president assembles the deportation army that he’s trying to assemble and they start using it and deploying it, we stand to lose a lot of workers out of our community, and it’s going to be very, very destabilizing.”
Maryland only had 16 ICE officers as of just a couple of months ago, Elrich said, but the greatly increased homeland security budget will “enable them to hire an army to actually carry out the displacement of people.”
“So don’t get too comfortable with the lack of really striking actions that have happened up to now. We’re really concerned that once these people are hired, this is the next thing we’re going to see,” he said.
Elrich said it will also be destabilizing to the housing market because landlords may have empty space in their apartment buildings.
“So there are a lot of challenges that this could bring to multiple levels of the economy.”
It will also impact tax revenue. Elrich said undocumented immigrant workers get an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) to work and they pay taxes — “and this is something I think people forget.”
“When the President puts this into full swing with his fully equipped army, this is going to get worse, and I think we need to be realistic about our expectations unless Congress comes to its senses and puts a stop to it,” he said. “We may face some very difficult times.”
