The fear of deportation hangs over unauthorized workers trying to fight exploitation, but all workers in the US have rights

Handcuffed food-processing workers are escorted into a bus after an ICE raid in Morton, Miss., in 2019. AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis

The Trump administration has repeatedly said it wants to deport as many people as possible. What that means for the estimated 8.3 million unauthorized immigrants in the American workforce is unclear.

It is also unclear whether those mass deportations will happen. The deportations recorded so far aren’t on track to meet Trump’s goal. And the economic reality is that deporting huge numbers of immigrants could cause severe labor shortages. As many as 1 in 20 U.S. workers are unauthorized immigrants. If they all were forced to leave or were too scared to show up to work, it could harm the economy.

In some cases, the labor rights of unauthorized workers could be another obstacle.

I am a professor who has spent more than two decades researching immigrant labor organizing. In “Scaling Migrant Worker Rights,” a book I co-authored with sociologist Shannon Gleeson, we explained that unauthorized workers in the U.S. have labor rights and how those workers can defend them. While challenging, in some cases, labor laws have protected some unauthorized immigrants from deportation, at least temporarily.

Legal protections

Federal and state laws guarantee some basic protections for all workers, regardless of their immigration status.

That includes the right to have a safe workplace and to earn the prevailing minimum wage where they’re employed, as well as overtime pay. Workers can report labor violations to the government, even if they are foreign-born and lack the legal authorization to work in the U.S.

It’s illegal for employers to retaliate for labor organizing at the workplace or for reporting minimum wage or overtime violations, unsafe working conditions, sexual harassment or racial discrimination.

To be sure, ensuring that these rights are respected is hard for workers who fear deportation – especially during an extremely anti-immigrant administration like the one Trump leads.

It should say:

And unauthorized workers don’t have all the labor rights of citizens and permanent residents. For example, if an unauthorized worker is illegally fired for trying to form a union, they aren’t entitled to back pay or reinstatement as a citizen or an immigrant who has obtained the requisite authorization to work in the U.S. would be. This limitation essentially renders the right to organize a union meaningless for unauthorized immigrants if their employers retaliate.

Obstacles and intimidation

Enforcing immigrants’ rights is, of course, hard to do.

Many immigrants don’t speak English well. They may distrust the government. They could have trouble affording a lawyer or finding one who will represent them for free when faced with a labor law violation.

Labor standards enforcement for unauthorized workers relies heavily on worker complaints, placing the burden on victims to speak out and submit a claim when faced with a violation. But they find it difficult to navigate through many layers of bureaucracy to file complaints with the proper authorities.

Many undocumented workers also face intimidation from their employers, who might threaten to report them to immigration authorities if they complain to the Labor Department about unfair treatment or unsafe working conditions. This fear of deportation keeps many vulnerable workers silent about their exploitation.

With only 650 investigators on staff at the Department of Labor in charge of enforcing minimum wage, overtime and child labor laws – as of late 2024 – enforcement is mostly reactive. Only 1% of all farm employers were investigated annually – even before the second Trump administration began.

ICE arrested more than 100 immigrants when it swept through Colony Ridge, Texas, in February 2025.

Those numbers could climb if the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, were to resume the large-scale enforcement raids the Biden administration halted in 2021.

Previously, ICE had visited meatpacking plants and other employers from Texas to Tennessee that rely heavily on immigrant labor, in order to verify employment authorization documents. The authorities detain workers without valid papers, possibly deporting them. Their employers may face criminal fines and penalties and be ordered to stop hiring unauthorized immigrant workers.

By early March 2025, the second Trump administration has not raided any large businesses. Instead, it has emphasized traffic stops and visits to small employers in communities with large numbers of unauthorized immigrants. But many big employers and communities are bracing for a wave of those operations.

Wage theft and contributions to fund benefits they can’t get

Working conditions for immigrants without authorization were already difficult before Trump took office for a second time.

Partly due to fear that their employers will report them to federal immigration enforcement authorities if they speak up, many of them experience wage theft, meaning that they don’t get all of their pay and benefits, or their compensation falls below the minimum wage where they reside.

Despite their typically low earnings, immigrants living without authorization who are employed in the U.S. pay more than $96 billion in federal, state and local taxes per year.

They also contribute to the Social Security system even though they can’t access these benefits when they retire, which the Internal Revenue Service requires of employers.

Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement program

Yet, over the years, many undocumented workers have come forward to defend their labor rights with the support of worker centers, labor unions, migrant-led organizations and consulates from their countries of origin.

Decades of increasingly visible grassroots advocacy for immigrant workers without authorization paid off in January 2023, when the Department of Homeland Security launched the Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement program. Known as DALE, it protects immigrant workers from exploitation and encourage reporting labor violations without fear of immigration consequences.

This government program provides temporary deportation protections and work permits to eligible workers, with over 7,700 work permits issued by October of 2024. The DALE program has encouraged many workers to come forward and report labor violations without fear of retaliation for speaking up, thus increasing minimum labor protections for all workers at thousands of workplaces.

DALE’s fate, however, is unclear now with Trump back in the White House.

Xóchitl Bada does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.