-
Congressional Hispanic Caucus leaders blamed ICE enforcement for rising grocery, construction and health care costs at a Sept. 17 press conference, using the term "ICE tax" — a phrase America's Voice coined in a report released weeks earlier, not one invented that day.
- That report's own federal price analysis, not a press paraphrase, puts lettuce up 32.1% over the year ending in June, with apples, citrus and home health care all running well above the 2.6% core inflation rate.
-
Texas sits at the crossing point of both the farm-labor and job-site stories, and two competing, separately sourced tallies of July's record ICE arrests are circulating at once.
Lawmakers from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus stood alongside the advocacy group America's Voice at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 17 and put a name to what they call a hidden cost of mass deportation. Caucus chairman Adriano Espaillat told reporters "everyone in this country is paying the ICE tax," tying the phrase to food, construction and health care costs he says are climbing as immigrant workers are pulled out of the economy.
