“DHS claims deportations are lowering rent. Economists agree”, 30 September 2026 (Photo via Washington Examiner — the original report)
As it ran on the front
This was in my coat. Hang on. It's been in the pocket since the twenty-second — you can see where the rain got at the fold.
It's a page I printed off the Washington Examiner. The headline reads, and I'll read it the way it's printed: "Biden's weakness cost you $3,000 — Trump's strength is saving you $2,500." Underneath it says that two years ago POLARIS National Security documented the price Americans paid. Two numbers on one page, both of them described as yours. Which of those two is the bigger number?…
…(cont) I only kept it because of what came out this morning. Eight days later — the twenty-second to the thirtieth, I counted it on my fingers sitting in the car — two pages land on the same day.
The first one's The Hill. "Brookings confirms what basic economics predicted about Biden's open border." I want to be careful here, because I had this wrong once already and a fellow set me straight, so: that page doesn't say economists. Not anywhere on it. It says basic economics predicted, and it names Brookings, and Brookings is who it names. Then it lists what it says the four years produced. Higher rents. Suppressed wages at the low end of the distribution. School systems absorbing students they hadn't budgeted for. Emergency rooms eating uncompensated care. Four items. I wrote all four down, because I'm slow.
The second page is the Washington Examiner again, same morning. "DHS claims deportations are lowering rent. Economists agree." That one does use the word — "some economists agree with the assessment," it says. And it says the Department declared rent reductions in major cities nationwide to be the result of fewer people living in the country.
So I put the two pages side by side on the hood of a car that needs a fan belt, which is all I did, and that's when I got stuck. The first page lists four things that went wrong. The second page reports one thing going right. Which of the four is it?
And the wages at the low end of the distribution — the ones the first page says were suppressed — which of these two pages tells you what those did afterward?
Here's the habit I have, and then I'll get out of your way. I keep every receipt from the garage in the glovebox. February's fan belt is in there with the part number on it and the hours written out, because when a man hands me a number I like to be able to put my hand on the paper it came off of. So this morning I went hunting on that second page for the cities. It says "major cities nationwide." That's the whole of it, that's the phrase. How many cities is that, on that page? And the sentence with the Department's own words in it — "DHS is reducing" — my printout stops right there, mid-thought, and I've been telling myself that's the printer.
One page says economics predicted rents going up when people arrived. The other page says economists agree rents came down when people left. Same rent, same morning, and on the first page the movement is a harm and on the second page it's an accomplishment. I'm not saying that's anything. I'm asking a smaller thing: on either page, is there a rent — a city, a building, a number before and a number after?
— Oh. Excuse me. I'm standing in your doorway, I apologize. One thing and then I'll go out in the rain.
This page from my pocket. Eight days old. Three thousand dollars going one direction, twenty-five hundred coming back the other, both of them printed as yours. If both numbers on their own page are correct, which way does that leave you — and by how much?
🍺
“One page this morning says people arriving drove your rent up, and the page beside it says people being hauled out drove your rent down, and both pages are selling you the same policy. Watch what quietly fell off the list: the first page counted suppressed wages, the schools, the emergency rooms — by the second page the only surviving item is rent, because rent is the one you can put in a press release. Your landlord still sets your rent; a federal department just put its name on the number.”
“Look, both things can be true, it's supply and demand, it's not complicated — did I say basic? That doesn't sound like me. The Department didn't list the cities because it's all of them, which is a stronger claim if you think about it, and if your rent goes back up in the spring that's a local housing matter, which I have always said.”
Department of Homeland Security officials have claimed that surging deportations have caused rent prices to fall, and some economists agree with the assessment. The federal department handling President Donald Trump’s mass deportation operation recently declared rent reductions in major cities nationwide to be the result of fewer people…
The Biden administration ran an unhedged book for four years. The results were higher rents, suppressed wages at the low end of the distribution, school systems absorbing students they hadn’t budgeted for, emergency rooms eating uncompensated care.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.
