DHS linked lower rents to fewer people living in the United States and urged support for mass deportations. But the Washington Examiner report quoting the agency’s September 30, 2026, post does not present a transparent analysis showing that deportations caused rent declines in the states it names. A Dallas Fed study supports a narrower point: unauthorized immigrant worker inflows raised rents and home prices in some local markets when housing supply did not expand. It does not test whether recent deportations lowered rents.
What DHS claimed—and what the report establishes
The Department of Homeland Security wrote, as quoted by Anna Giaritelli in the Washington Examiner on September 30, 2026: “DHS is reducing your rent, especially in states that cooperate with @ICEgov.” The post also said research showed that immigrant-worker inflows had pushed up rents and home prices, and asserted that this inflow had been reversed in states with the strongest interior enforcement.
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The article establishes that DHS made those claims. The material available in that report does not show the rent series, local population changes, comparison markets, or causal method needed to verify the claimed reversal or connect it to lower rents. That is a limit on what this reported claim demonstrates—not proof that DHS has never published other supporting evidence.
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There is a further distinction between a rent claim and a cost-of-living claim. Rent is one household expense. The cited report does not quantify whether deportations reduced total living costs, which also depend on other prices and on households’ incomes.
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What the Dallas Fed study found
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas economists Daniel J. Wilson and Xiaoqing Zhou examined unauthorized immigrant worker flows in working paper 2607, published March 23, 2026. Their study concerns an earlier episode: flows largely from early 2021 to early 2024, followed by a slowdown beginning in mid-2024. It is a working paper, not a final journal article, and it is not an evaluation of 2025–26 deportations.
The authors report that these worker flows increased local employment approximately one-for-one, with no significant decline in local wages, and reduced labor income per capita. They also find that the flows “raised local house prices and rents without expanding housing supply,” which they interpret as consistent with a housing-demand shock when supply is inelastic in the short run.
| Evidence | What it addresses | What it does not establish |
|---|---|---|
| DHS statement quoted in the Washington Examiner, September 30, 2026 | The agency’s assertion that enforcement reversals in some states are reducing rents. | The cited report does not provide a local causal analysis showing that deportations produced those rent changes. |
| Dallas Fed working paper 2607, March 23, 2026 | How unauthorized immigrant worker inflows affected local housing and labor-market outcomes in an earlier period. | Whether recent removals caused rents to fall in particular states or cities. |
The Dallas Fed finding is relevant to the mechanism DHS invokes, but it cannot simply be run backward as proof of the agency’s claim. The study measures worker inflows during a different period; the reported DHS claim concerns enforcement, removals, and rent changes in selected states.
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Yes, it is economically plausible. If fewer people seek housing in a local market while the number of available homes stays roughly fixed, housing demand can ease and rent pressure can fall. The Dallas Fed paper’s result is consistent with the reverse direction for a particular earlier episode: added worker flows raised local rents where housing supply did not expand.
But “fewer people in the country” is not enough to establish a rent effect in a particular city. The relevant question is whether the number of people seeking housing changed in that market, by how much, and at what time. A state-level enforcement measure and a national population claim do not by themselves answer that local question. Nor does a rent decline occurring at the same time as enforcement show that enforcement caused it.
What would demonstrate a deportation-related rent decline?
A persuasive analysis would compare actual housing-market changes in the places and period covered by the claim, rather than infer an effect from a before-and-after coincidence. At minimum, it would need to examine:
- Population change: actual changes in residents and housing demand in the relevant local markets, distinguishing removals from other changes in migration and household formation.
- Geography and timing: rent measures and enforcement exposure at a consistent local level, with dates showing that the population change preceded the rent change.
- Housing supply: construction, available units, vacancies, and other changes that can alter rents even if demand is unchanged.
- Comparison markets: places with different enforcement exposure but otherwise useful similarities, to help separate the effect of enforcement from wider market trends.
- Other outcomes and channels: labor-market changes and other factors that might amplify or offset a housing-demand effect.
The cited Washington Examiner account does not supply a city-by-city estimate or this kind of causal decomposition. Without it, the claim that deportations reduced rents in the states named remains un demonstrated by the evidence presented in that report.
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Housing demand is only one part of the story. In the Dallas Fed study, unauthorized immigrant worker flows increased local employment approximately one-for-one, did not significantly lower local wages, and reduced labor income per capita. Those results describe the study’s earlier inflow episode; they are not measured effects of recent deportations.
They also show why a housing result alone cannot settle whether a policy lowers the cost of living overall. A rent change and changes in employment or income are different outcomes. An assessment of household living costs would need to measure them rather than assume that a change in rents determines the full effect.
What deportation-cost estimates can—and cannot—tell us
The American Immigration Council’s 2024 report modeled the costs of hypothetical mass-deportation operations; it did not measure rent changes. The organization estimated that a one-time operation targeting 13.3 million people would cost at least $315 billion. For a scenario deporting one million people per year, it estimated an average cost of $88 billion annually and a total of $967.9 billion over more than a decade.
These are the Council’s scenario estimates, not government expenditure totals or observed outcomes. Its model uses stated population, survey, and enforcement-cost inputs, omits some capital and long-term costs, and depends on assumptions. The figures do not show whether deportations raised or lowered rents.
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