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Within days of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump releasing his first television campaign ad, full of anti-immigrant rhetoric, the political organization FWD.us released its own video, exploring the costs of mass deportation.
Trump doubles down on his familiar if provocative calls to temporarily stop Muslims from entering the country in the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, and to build a wall along the Mexican border to stop illegal immigration (even through the TV commercial features images of people streaming over the border in Morocco, not the U.S.)
FWD.us offers a different take on immigration, reacting to Trump’s calls for a deportation force to remove more than 11 million people living in the U.S. without documentation. It’s the latest installment in a six-part series, this one told from the perspective of a fictional businessman named “Joe” who describes an immigration raid on one of his favorite restaurants.
How much would such an effort cost? As much as $600 billion in new government spending over the next 20 years, according to estimates from the conservative American Action Forum, which took into account the costs to apprehend, detain, legally process and transport these immigrants. If immigration reform passed, on the other hand, the country would increase economic growth by 4.8 percent and lower the federal deficit by $1.2 trillion.
“At a 30,000 foot level, what we are trying to get people to focus on [is] the astronomical cost of what’s being proposed with this mass deportation,” Fwd.us President Todd Schulte said in an interview. “How would you go about rounding up and deporting 11.5 million people? What would go into that?”
Here’s the video:
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
