The Trump administration has waged numerous attacks on workers’ rights during its first 100 days, as outlined in EPI’s recent report. Some of the most damaging actions include targeting millions of migrant workers who have been granted the ability to reside and work in the United States lawfully, and who are currently employed in key industries like construction, hospitality, and food processing. The administration has been ending, canceling, pausing, and declining to renew protections and work permits through programs like Temporary Protected Status (TPS), the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan Parole Program (CHNV), the Uniting for Ukraine Program, and others. And if leaving millions of workers without workplace rights wasn’t enough, they’re also targeting them for deportation—in part because workers with these protections are easier to find given that the government already possesses much of their personal information. Aside from being cruel and irrational, these actions will have negative economic impacts, hurting growth and causing employers to lose valuable employees.

Trump has already announced the cancelation of status for roughly 2 million people with TPS and parole, and more are on the horizon. Some of these efforts are paused because of litigation, but there’s little hope that the programs and precarious statuses will survive Trump’s attacks in the long term. Trump is also now instructing immigration judges to deny asylum to applicants before they’ve had an opportunity to have their cases fully heard in court—which would leave asylum-seekers without work authorization and make them targets for deportation, too.

Altogether, nearly 5.6 million people in the U.S. held a temporary but precarious immigration status in 2024, accounting for roughly 40% of the total unauthorized immigrant population of 13.7 million (see Table 1). This includes over 2 million people who are asylum-seekers. (The migrants who qualified for protections like TPS and parole, as well as asylum-seekers, are formally considered and counted as part of the unauthorized immigrant population; see explanations from Pew and the Migration Policy Institute, for example.)

While these statuses and protections are only a band-aid for a flawed immigration system that is deeply in need of reform, they have been shown to protect millions of workers from some of the worst forms of employer lawbreaking. In addition to allowing workers to report workplace violations to government officials without fear of retaliation that can lead to deportation, it also means that a migrant worker with a work permit can be employed just about anywhere and change jobs freely, allowing them to find jobs that fit their skills and offer better wages and working conditions. The economic benefits of these protections are significant: On average, recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (better known as DACA) more than doubled their wages after obtaining a work permit. Another study found that workers who were granted TPS and a work permit saw a 13% wage gain relative to workers without it.

Employers also greatly benefit from workers having a protective status and a work permit. While comprehensive data are limited, we know, for example, that in 2017 the top five industries for TPS beneficiaries from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti were construction, restaurants and food services, landscaping, child day care services, and grocery stores. Employers in these industries and many others are in danger of losing their current workforce and will be prohibited from legally recruiting millions of other workers. Just one example is the GE Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky, a unionized plant where nearly 200 employees received a letter from the Trump administration terminating their status and work authorization. Overnight, GE lost 200 employees.

An alternative path to terminating temporary statuses would be to provide these workers with a permanent immigration status like a green card—and the rights that accompany it—allowing them to have full, equal, and permanent workplace rights and to exercise them in practice. That, in turn, would lead to higher wages and improved labor standards for all workers, not just those who newly obtain green cards. However, green cards can only be granted by Congress, and so far, the Republicans who control all three branches of government have shown no appetite for creating even one new green card. Not for the people who assisted U.S. troops during the war in Afghanistan, not for the workers who—during the pandemic and at great risk to their health and safety—grew and cultivated the food for the nation and kept essential services functioning. Not for anyone.

But in the meantime, tools like TPS, parole, and DACA can mean the difference between having rights on the job or being extraordinarily vulnerable to the worst abuses by employers. While the Trump administration has claimed they want to help U.S. workers by detaining and deporting unauthorized immigrants and canceling protections like TPS, actions like these reveal they clearly don’t care about improving conditions for workers. There is convincing evidence that deportations will kill jobs and shrink the economy. And if Trump’s cancelation of temporary immigration protections is not stopped, all of these measures combined will result in millions of workers being exploited by their bosses and driven into the informal economy. That, in turn, will reduce their tax contributions that support the social safety net and lower their wages significantly—ultimately hurting U.S workers in low-wage industries and the U.S. economy writ large by driving down demand for goods and services. It will also leave employers without millions of reliable employees in industries like construction, hospitality, childcare, agriculture, food processing and production, and more.