SACRAMENTO, United States, June 18 (Xinhua) -- From cattle-medicine maker ImmuCell to Google parent Alphabet, U.S. companies are warning investors that President Donald Trump's plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants could squeeze labor supplies, lift prices and tip the economy toward recession -- a danger now echoed in media reports and analyst notes.

According to a WIRED magazine analysis published on Monday, of 74 annual and quarterly filings, more than 40 firms have flagged deportations as a "material" risk since January, up from just six between 2020 and 2024.

FEARS CONFIRMED

Homebuilder Century Communities told regulators that construction crews are already scarce and deportations could delay closings and erode margins.

Regional lender Hanmi Financial said immigration sweeps, paired with tariffs and inflation, could help spark a mild recession in 2025.

Hawaiian Electric warned that a sudden labor shock might raise operating costs and eventually push customer rates "into the low single digits."

Warehouse club operator PriceSmart and telecom firm IDT predicted that shrinking migrant remittances would dent sales and money transfer fees to Central America.

News media confirmed those fears. For example, Bloomberg News reported on May 20 that pre-dawn U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweeps at four Arkansas poultry plants temporarily shut production lines and forced Tyson Foods to fly in managers from neighboring states, underscoring how sudden labor shocks can snarl supply chains.

Axios on Tuesday added that a White House pause on farm, hotel, and restaurant raids which lasted only five days before ICE teams redeployed under political pressure.

PRESSURE MOUNTING

Economists are tallying the ripple effects. A Moody's Analytics campaign scenario released in March 2024 projected that food prices could climb as much as six percent if deportations thin meat-packing and produce lines. The Federal Reserve's Dallas district Beige Book, dated March 6, already cites "reduced labor supply" in agriculture and construction linked to stricter enforcement.

Companies also face direct expenses. The National Restaurant Association's insurance arm told WIRED that a single large raid can cost a chain roughly 120,000 U.S. dollars in weekend sales and legal fees. Retailer Five Below disclosed in its first quarter 2025 regulatory filing that it spent 3 million dollars to re-verify work permits after auditor warnings.

Investor pressure is mounting. Boston-based Zevin Asset Management asked Alphabet in an April 12 proxy filing to audit its cloud contracts with Homeland Security for human-rights exposure. Governance advisers now rank immigration volatility alongside cybersecurity and artificial intelligence as top 2025 proxy-season watch list concerns.

Industry groups rushed to lobby the White House for moderation. In a June 15 Wall Street Journal interview, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Suzanne Clark said an enforcement-only strategy "risks pulling the rug out from under employers already struggling to fill openings."

At the Journal's Global Food Forum on Tuesday, Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya said dairy processors "cannot run without immigrant hands." At the same time, Hormel Foods chief executive Jim Snee predicted protein prices would rise if plant staffing thinned.

EERIE SILENCE

Recent raids underscore those warnings. The Los Angeles Times on Friday described an "eerie silence" over Ventura County strawberry fields after ICE detained 35 workers, forcing growers to truck in replacement crews from Arizona at premium wages. In Brooklyn, a tortilla factory closed for three days after 15 employees were caught in a February 20 work-site operation, local broadcaster NY1 reported.

An internal directive set a nationwide target of 3,000 immigration enforcement arrests per day, triple the pace of ICE's 2024 arrests. ICE statistics obtained by Bloomberg on April 30, showed the agency averaged fewer than 1,400 arrests per day in early January, indicating the new quota requires a sharp escalation.

Macroeconomic forecasters warned the fallout could spread quickly. Oxford Economics on April 8 projected in a simulation that deporting one million undocumented workers could lower U.S. gross domestic product by about one percent and increase unemployment among U.S.-born workers by 0.5 percentage points, although exact impacts would depend on timing and labor market conditions.

Supply-chain disruptions would likely amplify those effects across the economy. Freight carrier J.B. Hunt told analysts on June 10 that driver shortages linked to intensified immigration checks in Texas had already shaved second-quarter margins.

With summer harvests looming and construction entering peak season, executives from Midwestern meat plants to Southeastern homebuilders said the debate had shifted from ideology to operational risk. Their filings, conference calls, and public statements converge on a single refrain: mass deportation would reverberate through supply chains, consumer markets, and balance sheets, turning immigration enforcement into a national business emergency.