Substacks
Are U.S. Airlines ‘Playing Into Iran’s Game’? Jay Solomon
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, defines his campaign against Israel as being won as much through economics and psychological coercion as through victories on the battlefield. And nearly a year into the Jewish state’s war with Hamas, Iran’s military proxy in the Gaza Strip, Khamenei’s strategy appears to be advancing—with an assist from the U.S. airline industry.
For most of the past year, none of the three major American carriers—United Airlines, American Airlines, or Delta—have flown to Israel, citing the Gaza war and the security threats posed by Tehran and its military allies. And none of these airlines have offered definitive time frames for when their flights might resume. This has left Israel’s national carrier, El Al, as the only direct connection between the country and its closest ally and economic partner on the other side of the world, and has sent airfares between the U.S. and Israel skyrocketing.
In recent days, the cost of a round trip economy flight to Tel Aviv from New York on El Al is around $2,500, according to Israeli travel agencies, up from around $899 before October 7, 2023. United, American, and Delta previously all had at least one daily flight to Israel from New York or Newark, and together served Israel three times a week from Boston, Dallas, Miami, Chicago, and Washington D.C.
The suspension of the American flights is feeding into the economic and diplomatic isolation that Iran’s leaders are seeking, according to Israeli political and business leaders. “The American carriers are playing into Iran’s game,” said Eyal Hulata, who served as national security adviser to two Israeli prime ministers, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, from 2001–2003.
Jerusalem’s allies in Washington are urgently seeking to establish clearer U.S. government guidelines for when U.S. airlines should halt traffic to Israel, and when it can resume. If not, they warn, American carriers risk bolstering, even unwittingly, the economic coercion that Iran and Israel’s critics in the West are pursuing, often under the banner of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, or BDS.
“In my view, unless there’s an objective process put in place to prevent the politicization of air travel, I predict that in the future the BDS movement will try to weaponize air travel as a new means of boycotting Israel,” U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-New York) told The Free Press. “And a travel ban has the potential to be the most potent weapon in BDS’s war against the Jewish state.”
Torres wrote the presidents of American, Delta, and United in August asking them to map out the guidelines they followed in deciding to suspend their routes to Israel. None of the three airlines issued an official response to Torres’ letter, and his staff says they have communicated with the U.S. carriers’ government affairs teams, but didn’t disclose the result of these discussions.
Current and former Israeli officials told The Free Press they’re particularly confused by the U.S. airlines’ decisions as a number of Middle Eastern, African, and European carriers are currently flying to Tel Aviv despite these security threats. That includes three airlines from the United Arab Emirates—Etihad Airways, FlyDubai, and Wizz Air Abu Dhabi—whose government only normalized diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020 as part of the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords. These pacts seek to integrate Israel economically and diplomatically into the wider Arab world.
“They should fly to Israel exactly like the Gulf countries and others do,” said Hulata, the former national security adviser. “And if they don’t do this because they are scared of rockets, then there’s something fundamentally wrong in their decision making.”
Hulata, who now serves as a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, added: “There hasn’t been a rocket anywhere close to the airport for months.”
The three major U.S. carriers initially halted air travel to Israel last October 7 after Hamas militants crossed the country’s southern border and slaughtered 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The airlines’ decisions weren’t ordered, however, by the U.S.’s airline regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA only cautioned American carriers against flying to Israel at the time.
The FAA’s position was actually much more restrained than in the summer of 2014. Then, Hamas rocket strikes close to Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport—the primary international hub near Tel Aviv—caused the airline authority to briefly suspend all outbound U.S. flights. Israeli officials were incensed, arguing the ban amounted to an assault on the country’s economy. American supporters of Israel, including former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, flew to Tel Aviv on El Al flights to show solidarity.
The three U.S. airlines have said in public statements that their decisions on Israel are tied solely to the security threats posed to their crews and passengers. United and Delta briefly resumed flights to Tel Aviv in June, but then suspended them in August in the wake of the assassination of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Iran—an attack Tehran blamed on Israel and vowed to avenge.
The Iranian military and its proxies launched a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel in April in response to an Israeli strike on an Iranian compound in Syria. But they were almost all intercepted by Israel, U.S., European, and Arab air defenses. The Israel Defense Forces and Pentagon remain on high alert for another Iranian reprisal.
At present, Delta says its flights remain canceled through October 31; American Airlines cites March 2025 as a potential resumption date; and United Airlines says its services to Israel remain on hold indefinitely. “Our flights to Tel Aviv remain suspended—we look forward to resuming flights as soon as it’s safe for our customers and crew,” a United spokesperson told The Free Press.
American declined to comment and Delta said it is “continuously monitoring the evolving security environment and assessing our operations based on security guidance and intelligence reports and will communicate any updates as needed.”
This travel ban has forced Americans needing to go to Israel to either pay higher El Al fares or find more time-consuming routes through Europe. One U.S. defense expert who needed to meet Israeli security officials in Jerusalem this month to discuss the Iranian threat told The Free Press it took weeks to arrange a flight. No seats on El Al flights were available, and he eventually went via Paris on Air France. “It’s stunning how hard it was to get there,” he said.
Still, the outspokenness of a number of U.S. airline unions against travel to Israel has raised concerns among members of Congress and the Israeli government that politics may also be factoring into the flight ban.
A day after the October 7 attack, the president of the Allied Pilots Association, Captain Ed Sicher, ordered the union’s 16,000 members to refuse any requests from American Airlines to fly to the Jewish state. “As noted in APA’s initial update yesterday regarding the safe evacuation of working American Airlines crewmembers from Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that the country is now ‘at war.’ The Israeli security cabinet weighed in today, declaring that the country is in a ‘state of war,’ ” he wrote APA members. “Until further notice, if you are scheduled, assigned, or reassigned a pairing into Israel, refuse the assignment by calling your Chief Pilot or IOC Duty Pilot.”
In February, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA joined six other major American unions in calling for a formal U.S. ban on military supplies to Israel until Netanyahu agrees to a cease-fire with Hamas. “It is clear that the Israeli government will continue to pursue its vicious response to the horrific attacks of October 7 until it is forced to stop,” reads the statement from the AFA-CWA and six other unions. The spokeswoman for the AFA-CWS, Taylor Garland, has also regularly posted and reposted items on social media demanding a Gaza cease-fire and criticizing the military tactics of the Israel Defense Forces.
Garland and the AFA-CWA declined to respond to numerous requests from The Free Press to comment on Israel and whether the organization backs a U.S. flight ban if the Netanyahu government doesn’t agree to a cease-fire with Hamas. Other airline unions, trade associations, and pilots, however, downplayed the idea that politics were driving decisions, but rather cited security and basic economics. A number noted that insurance costs for the U.S. carriers rise in conflict zones, while the overall demand for flights decrease. Also, the length of U.S. flights to Israel require overnight stays for American pilots and crews, something that’s not normally an issue for European or Middle East carriers.
“Our number one concern as pilots, no matter where we’re flying—it doesn’t have to be to Tel Aviv, it can be to Toledo—it’s got to be safe and secure,” said Dennis Tajer, spokesman for the APA. “We didn’t make that call, but American Airlines did. Oftentimes, they will bring in a third layer, and that’s commercial interests.”
One pilot from a major U.S. carrier told The Free Press he regularly signs up to fly to Tel Aviv when the ban appears set to be lifted. But then the airline again cancels, following a new security assessment. “It hurts us financially, but the decision is really down to our security department,” said the airman.
The suspension of U.S. flights to Israel has contributed to a broader shock to the Israeli economy since the war with Hamas erupted last October. Israel’s calling up of 360,000 reservists after the Hamas attack, roughly 4 percent of the population, has placed a particular strain on the economy. The country’s growth contracted 1.4 percent during the second quarter of 2024 from the year earlier, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, and its exports of goods and services dropped 8.3 percent. The Israeli economy experienced a double-digit contraction in the months directly preceding the Hamas attack.
“Aviation has a big impact on our country because we’re like an island,” said Professor Nicole Adler, dean of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Business School. “I know that we have Syria and Egypt and so on around us. But most traffic is coming in via airlines, and it’s very sad that this war has gone on for as long as it has.”
Since October, Iran and its proxies across the region have made no secret of their desire to constrict international trade and passenger traffic going into and out of Israel. According to Iranian officials, this will both drain Israel’s economy and impose a psychological toll on the broader populace.
Much of Tehran’s efforts have centered on the Red Sea, where the Iranian-backed Houthi militia has launched hundreds of attacks on tankers and other maritime vessels transiting through the Suez Canal—some on their way to Israel. Just this month, the Yemeni militants launched six missile strikes on international maritime traffic, including on Panamanian- and Saudi-flagged oil tankers.
On Sunday, the Houthis successfully launched a long-range missile at central Israel for the first time. Israeli defense officials said their air defense system largely destroyed the projectile, though some fragments landed on agricultural land and near a railway station.
This, combined with the reduced air traffic, has prompted self-congratulatory comments from Iranian officials, including Ayatollah Khamenei, that their multifront war against the Jewish state is working. Since becoming Iran’s Supreme Leader in 1989, the 84-year-old cleric has made clear that the path toward liberating Palestine will be achieved as much through making Israel unlivable to its Jewish residents as through open warfare.
“Four million people will leave Israel. [This means] reverse migration,” Khamenei told a television audience during a June 3 speech marking the death of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. “In other words, the level of perplexity, confusion, and panic among Israeli officials has reached this degree. Pay attention to this! This is very important!”
Jay Solomon is an investigative reporter for The Free Press and author of The Iran Wars. Follow him on X at @jaysolomon, and read his last piece “How Close Is Iran to the Bomb?”
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Former Republican representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming joined Vice President Kamala Harris on a stage hung with red, white, and blue bunting and signs that said “Country Over Party.” As Cheney took the stage, the crowd chanted, “Thank you, Liz!” The two were on the campaign trail today in Ripon, Wisconsin, the town that claims to be the birthplace of the Republican Party. It was in that then-tiny town in 1852 that Alvan E. Bovay, who had recently emigrated from New York, called for a new political party to stand against slavery.
The idea of a new party took off in 1854 when it became clear the Kansas-Nebraska Act permitting the westward expansion of human enslavement would become law. When they met in February of that year, people in Ripon were early participants in the movement of people across the North to defend democracy. Rather than standing against slavery alone, those organizing in 1854 stood against an entire political system, opposing the small group of elite enslavers who had taken over the U.S. government in order to establish an oligarchy and were quite clear they rejected the self-evident truth in the Declaration of Independence that all men were created equal. Instead, they intended to rule over the nation’s majority, whose labor produced the capital that southern leaders believed only elites should control.
In the face of this existential threat to the country, party divisions crumbled.
Pundits have described today’s event as a component of Harris’s ongoing outreach to Republicans, and in part, it is. That outreach, begun under President Joe Biden and continuing even more aggressively under Harris, is bearing fruit as in an open letter today, two dozen Republican former officials and lawmakers in Wisconsin endorsed Harris and her running mate Minnesota governor Tim Walz. “We have plenty of policy disagreements with Vice President Harris,” the Republicans wrote. “But what we do agree upon is more important. We agree that we cannot afford another four years of the broken promises, election denialism, and chaos of Donald Trump’s leadership.”
Lately, there have been indications of what returning Trump to office might mean.
On Tuesday, Trump suggested that the U.S. soldiers who sustained traumatic brain injuries (TBI) when Iran attacked an Iraqi base where they were stationed were not truly injured, but simply had “headaches.” Trump’s statement brought back to light a 2021 CBS report by Catherine Herridge and Michael Kaplan that found the injured soldiers had not been recognized with a Purple Heart, awarded to service members wounded or killed in the line of duty, despite qualifying for it. This slight meant they were denied the medical benefits that come with that military decoration.
The soldiers told Herridge and Kaplan that they were pressured to downplay their injuries to avoid undercutting Trump’s attempt to keep the casualty numbers in that incident low. With the story back in the news, Kaplan posted that after the report, the Army awarded the soldiers the Purple Hearts they deserved.
Journalist Magdi Jacobs recalled the argument of Trump’s lawyers before the Supreme Court that Trump could not prod a SEAL team to assassinate a rival because service members would adhere to the rules of their institutions. The Army officers’ bowing to Trump’s political demands proved that argument was wrong and set off “[m]ajor alarm bells,” Jacobs posted, suggesting that the military would not stand firm against Trump in a second term, especially now that the Supreme Court says a president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of official duties.
Scott Waldman and Thomas Frank of Politico’s E&E News covering energy and the environment reported today that two former White House officials said that Trump was “flagrantly partisan” when responding to natural disasters. One said that in 2018 Trump refused to approve disaster aid after wildfires to California, perceiving it as a Democratic state. To get disaster money, the aide showed Trump polling results revealing that Orange County, which had been badly damaged in the fires, “had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa.”
Defending the Big Lie that Trump had won the 2020 presidential election, former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters in 2021 gave a security badge to a man associated with MyPillow owner Mike Lindell to enable him to breach the county’s voting systems in an unsuccessful attempt to find evidence of voter fraud. A jury found Peters guilty of four felonies related to the scheme. Today, District Court Judge Matthew Barrett sentenced Peters to nine years in prison.
But there are other stories these days of what the government can accomplish when it is focused on the good of all Americans.
About 45,000 dock workers in the International Longshoremen’s Association went on strike Tuesday when the union could not reach an agreement with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) employer group over a new contract. The strike shut down 36 ports from Maine to Texas, affecting about half the country’s shipping just as the areas hammered by Hurricane Helene desperately needed supplies. Dockworkers wanted a pay increase of up to 77% over six years and better benefits, as well as an end to the automation that threatens union jobs.
President Joe Biden reiterated his support for collective bargaining despite the threat to an economic slowdown from the strike. The Wall Street Journal editorial board excoriated Biden and the union, saying: “President Biden wants unions to have extortionary bargaining power, and he’s getting a demonstration of it on election eve. Congratulations.”
But today the International Longshoremen’s Association suspended the strike after USMX agreed to wage increases of 62% over six years. The two sides agreed to extend the current contract until January 15 to address the issues of benefits and automation. Administration officials White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, top White House economic advisor Lael Brainard, Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg helped broker the temporary agreement.
The government’s power to make things better is also on display amid the rubble and ruin left behind by Hurricane Helene. Yesterday evening, after taking an aerial tour of western North Carolina to survey the damage and receiving a briefing in Raleigh, President Biden thanked both “the Republican governor of South Carolina and the Democratic governor of North Carolina and all of the elected officials who’ve focused on the task at hand. In a moment like this, we put politics aside. At least we should put it all aside, and we have here. There are no Democrats or Republicans; there are only Americans. And our job is to help as many people as we can as quickly as we can and as thoroughly as we can.”
Biden explained that the federal government had 1,000 first responders in place before the storms hit, and that he had approved emergency declarations as soon as he received the requests from the governors. Yesterday he directed the Defense Department to move 1,000 soldiers to reinforce North Carolina’s National Guard to speed up the delivery of supplies like food, water, and medicine to isolated communities, some of which are accessible now only by pack mule.
He has already deployed 50 Starlink satellites for communication, and more are coming.
Teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency are offering free temporary housing, as well as delivering food and water. They are helping people apply for the help that they need.
While Trump and MAGA Republicans insist that Biden is botching the response to Helene, CNN fact checker Daniel Dale noted that the response has gotten bipartisan praise. Republican governors Henry McMaster of South Carolina and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia both thanked Biden by name for what McMaster called a “superb” response.
So today’s bipartisan event in Ripon suggests far more than Democratic outreach to Republicans. It appears to be a commitment to a government that advances the interests of ordinary people, and protects the right of everyone to be treated equally before the law and to have a say in their government. Republican Abraham Lincoln articulated this worldview for his fledgling party in 1859 as it took a stand against oligarchs. Believing these principles accurately represented the aspirations of the nation’s founders, Lincoln called them “conservative.” People from all parties rallied to the party that promised to defend those principles.
“The president of the United States must not look at our country through the narrow lens of ideology or petty partisanship or self-interest,” Harris said today. “The president of the United States must not look at our country as an instrument for their own ambitions. Our nation is not some spoil to be won. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised: the nation that inspired the world to believe in the possibility of a representative government. And so in the face of those who would endanger our magnificent experiment, people of every party must stand together.”
“In this election, putting patriotism ahead of partisanship is not an aspiration. It is our duty,” Cheney said. “I ask all of you here and everyone listening across this great country to join us. I ask you to meet this moment. I ask you to stand in truth, to reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump.
“And I ask you instead to help us elect Kamala Harris for president. I know…that…a president Harris will be able to unite this nation. I know that she will be a president who will defend the rule of law, and I know that she will be a president who can inspire all of our children—and if I might say so, especially our little girls—to do great things. So help us right the ship of our democracy so that history will say of us, when our time of testing came, we did our duty and we prevailed because we loved our country more.”
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Notes:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-liz-cheney-joins-harris-campaign-rally-in-ripon-wis
https://apnews.com/article/kamala-harris-cheney-wisconsin-trump-89396853e5521c3870a3c88e04cbfd99
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/10/02/adam-kinzinger-republicans-colin-allred-texas/
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4914462-colorado-county-clerk-sentenced-election-breach/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/03/port-strike-over/
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/03/politics/fact-check-trump-biden-hurricane-response/index.html
https://www.axios.com/2024/10/01/hurricane-helene-north-carolina-mules-aid
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Hurricane Helene caused mass destruction across the southeastern United States, leaving thousands needing aid and at least 227 people dead. Now, former President Donald Trump is using the disaster as a political cudgel, falsely claiming that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is out of money because it diverted funds to “illegal immigrants.”
“The Harris-Biden administration says they don’t have any money [for hurricane relief]. … They spent it all on illegal migrants,” Trump said Thursday during a rally in Michigan. “They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank.”
Trump’s claim is false. FEMA is not out of money, and no money was diverted to undocumented immigrants.
FEMA, a part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), says it has enough funds for recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Helene. On Wednesday, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said, “We have the immediate needs right now.” Mayorkas said he was concerned there may not be enough funds for the rest of hurricane season, with another hurricane expected to hit later this week.
But any shortfall would be driven by the increase in extreme weather events — not disaster relief funds being diverted to undocumented immigrants. FEMA has a separate program, the Shelter and Services Program, which gives funds to local governments and nonprofits to provide shelter, food, and transportation to undocumented immigrants. In 2024, Congress allocated $650 million to the program. The administration has a legal obligation to spend funds for their Congressionally-authorized purpose.
During his presidency, Trump diverted disaster relief money to provide services for undocumented immigrants. In 2019, the Trump administration informed Congress that it was taking “$155 million from the disaster fund” for “immigration detention space and temporary hearing locations for asylum seekers,” the Washington Post reported.
Trump’s lies about FEMA, which are ongoing, have also been amplified by other Republican allies, including Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), Representative Troy Nehls (R-TX), and Elon Musk.
This is not just another lie. Spreading misinformation about FEMA’s capabilities hampers relief efforts. On Friday, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said at a press conference that misinformation can lead to people who need help not registering for aid. “This level of misinformation creates the scenario where they won’t even come to us,” Criswell said.
Trump has always exploited undocumented immigrants for political advantage. But falsely blaming migrants for nearly every problem — real and imagined — is the core issue of the Trump 2024 campaign.
The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for a “crime wave”
Trump’s false claim that undocumented immigrants are responsible for a crime wave is a staple of his stump speech. On August 22, Trump claimed that the Biden-Harris administration “unleashed a deadly plague of migrant crime on our country by not doing their job.” At the Turning Point Action Conference in July, Trump told the crowd, “We have a new form of crime. It’s called migrant crime.”
There is no violent crime wave. Violent crime has declined or remained flat each year of the Biden administration. According to the FBI’s 2023 crime report, violent crime decreased three percent last year, and there was a significant decline in murder (-11.3%).
Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics and crime statistics expert, told Popular Information he has not seen “any evidence” of undocumented immigrants fueling increases in crime. Asher previously looked at “violent crime across the 14 counties along the Texas border with Mexico” and found a “relatively steady violent crime rate below that of the rest of their state and the nation as a whole.” Furthermore, research shows that immigration is linked to decreases in violent crime, and neighborhoods with higher concentrations of immigrant populations have lower crime rates.
The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for voter fraud
Trump has also falsely claimed that the Biden administration is allowing undocumented immigrants to enter the country so that they can illegally vote and steal the 2024 election. Last week, Trump argued that the Biden-Harris administration “stole the FEMA money” so that they could give it to undocumented immigrants as a political strategy because they want them to “vote for them.”
During the presidential debate against Vice President Harris in September, Trump claimed that “a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote.” Trump stated, “They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in, practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote, and that’s why they’re allowing them into our country.” This claim has been repeated by Trump and his allies for months. It is also rooted in a white nationalist conspiracy theory called the great replacement theory.
But the reality is that it is illegal for undocumented immigrants to vote in U.S. elections. Further, data shows it almost never happens. The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, maintains a database of voter fraud that found “fewer than 100 examples of non-citizens voting between 2002 and 2022, amid more than 1 billion lawfully cast ballots.”
The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for driving up housing costs
During the vice presidential debate last week, Senator JD Vance (R-OH) claimed that housing is “totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.” Vance also argued that undocumented immigrants are “one of the most significant drivers of home prices in the country.”
This is not true. Economists and housing experts told the Washington Post that many other factors are more significant than undocumented immigrants when it comes to increases in housing prices. Additionally, many immigrants come into the country with “few financial resources,” and are therefore “far less likely to be able to buy a home.” While there is evidence that an increase in immigrants may slightly increase rent rates, just as any population increase, a study shows that the increase is minimal.
The Trump campaign plans to conduct a “mass deportation” of undocumented immigrants to lower housing costs. But, according to economists, this plan would likely increase housing costs instead of lowering them. A report by Mother Jones notes that Trump’s deportation plans may “grind the construction of new housing to a halt,” since 1.4 million undocumented workers work in construction, making up “more than 10 percent of the entire labor force, and 32 percent of roofers.”
The Trump campaign claims undocumented immigrants will bankrupt Medicare and Social Security
At nearly every campaign stop, Trump claims that undocumented immigrants will drain resources from Medicare and Social Security.
At a Pennsylvania rally on August 17, Trump said “[Harris is] going to destroy your Medicare. She’s going to destroy your Social Security. First, she has thrown open our borders. Second, she is flooding our country with millions and millions of low-wage migrants and giving them welfare, free health care, food stamps, public benefits…. She wants to make them citizens, dumping them onto Medicare and dumping them into your beautiful Social Security program.”
The GOP has also included this claim in its official 2024 platform, which reads, “Republicans will protect Medicare’s finances from being financially crushed by the Democrat plan to add tens of millions of new illegal immigrants to the rolls of Medicare. We vow to strengthen Medicare for future generations.”
Studies show, however, that immigrants boost Medicare and Social Security by contributing more tax dollars than they receive in benefits from the two programs.
A 2013 study, for example, found that in 2009, immigrants made 14.7 percent of all contributions to Medicare that year while only accounting for 7.9 percent of the program’s expenditures, resulting in a surplus of nearly $14 billion. That same year, people born in the US generated a deficit of $30.9 billion. (Undocumented immigrants are not able to enroll in Medicare.)
Immigrants have a similar effect on the Social Security budget because they increase the ratio of workers paying into the system to retirees benefiting from it. (Undocumented immigrants cannot recieve social security benefits.)
The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for taking jobs from American citizens
Another popular Trump refrain is that undocumented immigrants are taking jobs from American citizens. In a September speech to the Economic Club of New York, he claimed that “100% of the jobs created under [Biden’s] administration have gone to illegal migrants that came into our country.”
According to reporting by Forbes, this is false. Since Biden took office, the number of U.S.-born people in the workforce has increased by 6%, and the number of foreign-born workers has increased by 22%. Under Trump, both workforce populations decreased, by 1.4%and 1.6%respectively.
As Popular Information has previously reported, undocumented immigrants in the US workforce mean more jobs for American citizens. If Trump is elected and carries out his plan for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, U.S.-born citizens can expect their job opportunities to shrink. One study on the economic impacts of deportation found that for every 1 million immigrants deported between 2008 and 2014, 88,000 American workers lost jobs. Without undocumented immigrants, the American economy’s current labor shortage would be even worse.
The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for smuggling Fentanyl
At a July rally, Trump claimed “We’re losing 300,000 people a year to fentanyl that comes through our border.” Vance parrotted this claim at the vice presidential debate last week, saying, “Kamala Harris let in fentanyl into our communities at record levels.”
However, it is largely American citizens who are responsible for bringing fentanyl into the country. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, 86.2 percent of fentanyl trafficking offenders in 2021 were U.S. citizens.
Trump’s claim that fentanyl is killing hundreds of thousands of Americans a year is also exaggerated. The total number of annual drug overdoses is between 100,000 and 110,000, while the number of opioid overdoses (which includes, but is not limited to, fentanyl deaths) is about 81,000.
The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for inflation
Undocumented immigrants are also responsible for inflation, according to Trump. In July, he told supporters at a Michigan rally that “another key driver of inflation is the migrant invasion Kamala Harris has created on our southern border.”
A study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that if Trump succeeded in deporting 7.5 million workers over a two-year period, inflation would be 7.4 percent higher than if the mass deportation plan was not enacted because the deportation would worsen existing labor shortages and decrease production. If Trump deported 1.3 million workers, inflation would be 1.3 percent higher.
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