Enforcement

Do undocumented immigrants pay taxes?

Undocumented Immigrants play a crucial role in the U.S. economy, not only through their labor but also through substantial tax contributions that support public services and government programs.

  • In 2022, households led by undocumented immigrants paid $75.6B in total taxes. This includes:
    • $29.0B in state and local taxes
    • $46.6B in federal taxes
  • In 2022, approximately 4.5% of the U.S. workforce was undocumented.
  • 89.8% of undocumented immigrants are of working age.

Our Map the Impact tool shows the tax contributions of immigrants at the national, state and local level.

Recent Features

All Enforcement Content

September 24, 2015

Last week, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) announced changes to the regulations governing legal representation in immigration court and at the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA...

September 23, 2015

Related Content: The Effectiveness of Alternatives to Detention for Asylum Seekers. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently announced a pilot case management program as an alternative...

September 18, 2015

Related Content: Family Detention Resource Page This week, the drumbeat to end family detention got louder when the United States Commission on Civil Rights (the Commission) released a report...

September 17, 2015

A federal judge in Arizona issued a decision on September 4, which some say signals the end of years of legal challenges against Arizona’s SB 1070 law. For the most part, the law has been gutted,...

September 14, 2015

The heated political rhetoric so far in the 2016 presidential campaign has often been at the expense of immigrants. And the policy solutions put forth by some candidates have centered around...

September 9, 2015

  On Friday evening, just before the Labor Day weekend, the government released five mothers and their five children, ranging in age from three to seventeen years old, from the South Texas...

September 4, 2015

The Central American refugee influx along the U.S.-Mexico border, which generated so much press attention in 2014, is not going away anytime soon. The conditions which spur Salvadorans,...

September 1, 2015

A change in topic is desperately needed right now in the political and policy debate over immigration. The most recent public discussions on how to reform immigration—led in large part by the...

August 31, 2015

New data obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) shows that while the government’s use of detainers is decreasing, the number of detainers issued for individuals without...

August 28, 2015

Earlier this summer, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), announced new policies regarding transgender adult detainees in its custody—policies that were intended to provide a “respectful,...

June 20, 2018
President Donald Trump signed an executive order today to try to stem criticism of his family separation policy. He has offered an unacceptable alternative: imprisoning mothers and fathers with their children.
June 19, 2018

Every day under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is choosing to separate children from their parents. Despite claims by the...

June 18, 2018

The outcry against family separation has only just begun. The Trump administration’s cruel policy of separating migrant children from their parents when they cross the U.S.-Mexico border is...

June 14, 2018

The end of Ramadan 2018 is here, which is the holy month of fasting, contemplation, and prayer for Muslims worldwide. Yet, despite the First Amendment’s protection of the right to practice one’s...

In the year and a half since the FOIA request was filed, CBP largely failed to provide any records in response to the request. On June 11, 2018, the Council, represented by O’Melveny & Myers LLP, filed a lawsuit to compel DHS and CBP to comply with FOIA and to release additional records related to the 2016 request.
June 8, 2018

More than 100 workers were arrested at a gardening and landscaping company in northern Ohio on Wednesday, marking another massive employment crackdown under the Trump administration. This raid...

June 7, 2018

Time and time again, immigrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border are never given a meaningful opportunity by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers to explain why they fear...

June 7, 2018
José Crespo Cagnant filed a lawsuit to hold the government accountable for abusive, unlawful conduct and depriving him of an opportunity to apply for asylum.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers all too frequently deny individuals fleeing persecution and torture their right to seek protection in the United States, issue summary removal orders against them, and then falsify documents to support their illegal actions.
June 6, 2018

Since the implementation of a “zero-tolerance” policy in April 2018 toward illegal entry (as well as attempted illegal entry) into the United States, criminal prosecutions of unauthorized border-...

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