Catie Cheshire
Audio By Carbonatix
President Donald Trump‘s administration bragged on Wednesday, January 14, that his mass deportation plan, which has led to nearly 70,000 incarcerations during the past year, is making homes more affordable in Denver and other “sanctuary cities.”
“Through mass deportations, the Trump administration is freeing up resources, revitalizing opportunity, and restoring safety,” a White House press release reads. “Home prices have dropped for the first time in more than two years as housing affordability shows signs of improvement under the Trump administration.”
The experts say otherwise.
According to the White House’s recent announcement, fourteen of the top twenty metro areas with the largest illegal migrant populations saw home list prices decline year-over-year in December, including Denver, Austin, Boston and Washington, D.C. Data from the U.S. Census shows that Denver has about 117,000 foreign-born residents, but that includes some citizens. Migrant Policy, a nonprofit, estimates Colorado is home to more than 200,000 undocumented immigrants.
The White House links to a January 8 article by Realtor.com as its source for decreases in median home prices, which are based on home listing data on Realtor.com. Those numbers say that Denver’s median home price decreased by 3.4 percent from the end of 2024 to December 2025, but the Realtor.com article makes no mention of deportations of immigrants as factors in changing home values, instead identifying “local supply and demand dynamics” as “what matters most in housing.”
But just because things may be cheaper doesn’t mean people can afford them. Denver is near the top of the country in monthly inflation, household debt and increased credit card delinquency, according to recent economic reports.
And while the White House frames Realtor’s data as proof of the direct benefits of mass deportations, homes across the country are losing their value. According to a November national real estate report by Zillow, Denver led the country among major metros where homes lost value during the past year, with 91 percent of Denver-area homes seeing their prices drop on a year-over-year basis in October.
In fact, the Realtor article describes 2025, Trump’s first year back in office, as “a year of frustration for buyers and sellers alike.” Realtor predicts 2026 will be better for the national housing market because of “lower mortgage rates, greater inventory and a gradual step toward better balance.”
Local real estate reports also rebuke the White House’s claims.
In a report on Denver housing market trends for December 2025, Denver Metro Association of Realtors chair Amanda Snitker wrote that “immigration policy added construction cost pressures” that hurt the real estate industry. According to DMAR, Denver’s housing market remained flat from 2024 to 2025 despite “damage from wider economic forces” such as “persistent inflation concern and tariff uncertainties.”
DMAR reports that the median home closing price, or the price at which a house is finally sold, was about $575,000 in 2025, down about 0.5 percent from 2024.
Seven other cities on the White House’s recent immigration hit list had larger median home pricing drops per Realtor data. Austin saw a 7.3 percent drop, San Diego a 6.7 percent decrease and Phoenix a 3.5 percent dip. The White House notes that “three metro areas that saw modest price increases are all so-called ‘sanctuary cities,'” a term favored by Republicans to describe a city’s with policies against working with federal immigration law enforcement.
Those three “sanctuary cities” are Seattle, Chicago and Philadelphia, which each saw their median home listings go up between 0.3 and 0.5 percent. Denver is also considered a sanctuary city by Trump and Republicans, largely thanks to 2019 laws limiting city employees or police cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The White House’s claim that deportations are making homes cheaper comes as ICE faces backlash for the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. Good, a former Colorado resident, had reportedly been trying to act as a legal observer when she was shot in the head and killed by an ICE agent amid large-scale operations in Minneapolis, a major metro area whose name was left out of the White House press release.
The Trump administration also attributed safer cities and a better economy to the president’s mass deportation plan, at times called Operation Aurora, claiming that deportations and arrests have led to better wages for truckers and construction workers because both industries have a high number of foreign-born workers.
