Treasurer Deborah Goldberg was one of 16 state fiscal officers who wrote this week to President Donald Trump to express “outrage and alarm” about recent federal immigration enforcement activities and consequences for state budgets.
The Democrats’ letter to Trump says they are deeply concerned about the “human toll, the climate of fear, and the violence and death” that has come along with the Trump administration’s stepped-up immigration enforcement actions in Minnesota and elsewhere. They also said the actions “threaten to produce economic harm” for their states because they make people fearful about engaging in everyday economic activity.
“Business leaders have expressed concern about the impacts of such actions on their workforces and operations. If economic activity is interrupted and uncertainty spreads through local markets, state and local governments will feel the effects through reduced revenue, instability in employment-related tax receipts, and added strain on public resources,” the Democratic treasurers, comptrollers and an auditor wrote in the letter dated Tuesday. “The cumulative effect would be lost productivity, diminished economic output, and weakened fiscal indicators that directly affect state creditworthiness, borrowing costs, and long-term financial planning.”
On Wednesday, Trump told NBC News that his administration would take “a little bit of a softer touch” around immigration enforcement actions in the wake of the shooting deaths of two citizens in Minnesota.
The letter from 16 Democrat state fiscal officers did not ask Trump to stop his administration’s immigration crackdown, but instead to “immediately scale back enforcement activities” and to “ensure the economic stability our communities require.”
Colin Young is the deputy editor for State House News Service and State Affairs Pro Massachusetts. Reach him at colin.young@statehousenews.com.
