As the immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota takes a toll on local businesses, whose customers and employees are staying off the streets out of fear, some public budgets heads have a message to the White House: Stop.
Democratic state treasurers, auditors and comptrollers from 15 states — including two from California — sent a letter on Wednesday to President Trump calling for a halt to aggressive tactics that they say have depressed economic activity and tax collections.
“Many of our states already send more tax dollars to Washington than we receive in federal support,” read the letter, whose signatories also included the fiscal officers of Maryland, Oregon and New York. “We are now expected to absorb the fiscal consequences of enforcement activities. This is not acceptable.”
State fiscal officers do not often weigh in as a group on law enforcement matters. They leave that to attorneys general, who frequently write collective letters and court briefs, typically with members of their own party.
The letter was organized by For the Long Term, a group of progressive-leaning state and local financial overseers who aim to foster economic and budgetary stability beyond the rapid churn of election cycles. The signatories said they came together when they determined that what was unfolding in Minnesota crossed into their domain as stewards of the public purse.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on the letter. Tom Homan, Mr. Trump’s border czar, said on Wednesday that the administration would withdraw 700 immigration agents from Minnesota, leaving around 2,000 there.
Other states have also experienced extended Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence, including Illinois, where Operation Midway Blitz took place in the fall. Mike Frerichs, the state’s treasurer, said sales and income taxes dipped during that period, as people fearing federal officers avoided restaurants and shops in neighborhoods like Chicago’s Little Village.
“If you’re terrorizing people, and they think they’re going to be arrested or shot, they’re going to stay home, and they’re not going to be spending money,” Mr. Frerichs said. “Donald Trump and Stephen Miller may not care about immigrants to this country, but the fear and chaos that they are sowing in our cities are having ripple effects on taxpaying Americans.”
Officials from other states are thinking about what might happen if ICE came through in force.
“There’s always concern that our state might be next,” said Mike Pellicciotti, the treasurer of Washington, which has large immigrant communities in both agriculture and technology. He said ICE deployments were just one of several blows from the federal government over the past year, including tariffs.
“This reckless economic policy is having an impact across the board,” Mr. Pellicciotti said. “We’re a trade-dependent state. We’re a state that relies on a talented work force from around the world wanting to come.”
Mr. Trump has threatened to withhold funding for Democratic cities and states, including child care subsidies, public housing assistance and food stamps. The White House has also pulled back clean energy and other infrastructure grants, such as $205 million for the $16 billion Gateway project between New York and New Jersey.
For state and local finances, the damage from the Trump administration’s immigration restrictions and expanding enforcement efforts might take a while to play out, said William Glasgall, public finance adviser at the Volcker Alliance, a think tank. Many states, especially in the Northeast and the industrial Midwest, have depended on immigration to keep their populations steady or growing.
“Budgets are getting tighter and if the immigration restrictions begin to crimp the tax base — we’ll see in the next year or two what this looks like in terms of sales tax growth and income tax growth — then you have reason for concern,” Mr. Glasgall said.
The list of signatories included states that received an influx of migrants during the Biden administration, a situation that also had tremendous fiscal costs. They were borne primarily by cities like Denver, whose mayor unsuccessfully pleaded for federal help as he spent tens of millions of dollars to accommodate the new arrivals. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that while the surge boosted tax revenues for state and local governments, their spending went up by about $10 billion more.
State fiscal officers said that current efforts to expel unauthorized immigrants have much wider implications for local economic activity because even legal residents fear being stopped and detained.
“All of a sudden it presents this huge barrier to people participating in their communities,” said Dave Young, Colorado’s treasurer. Plus, he said, immigrants are essential to the state’s work force.
“The concern that I have is that so many of these people that are here performing these tremendous services that we absolutely need, if they leave Colorado put us in a pretty significant economic bind,” he said.
Lydia DePillis reports on the American economy for The Times. She has been a journalist since 2009, and can be reached at [email protected].
The post State Fiscal Chiefs Protest Federal Immigration Chaos appeared first on New York Times.
