Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: Mass Deportations Are Bringing Rents Down for Working-Class Americans

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda is helping to bring rents down for working- and lower-middle-class Americans.

Last month, apartment rents fell 1.1 percent compared to the same time last year and dropped 5.2 percent compared to the same period in 2022 when rents had peaked.

During an interview on Fox Business Channel, Bessent credited deportations for helping drive down rents and pointed to a recent study from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, which found a deep correlation between immigration and housing.

“Rents are down. You know the story that the Biden administration doesn’t want to talk about: The mass unfettered immigration that pushed up rents, especially for working Americans,” Bessent said:

There’s a recent study out from [the] Wharton School that shows every one percent increase in population, rents went up one percent. So, [President Trump], by enforcing the border, sending home more than 2 million illegals, we’re now seeing … rents coming down substantially. I think that will continue for the rest of the year. We brought interest rates down, so we brought mortgage rates down, and I think everything else will follow that. [Emphasis added]

Also on Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance told a crowd in Allentown, Pennsylvania, that housing costs and rents skyrocketed over the prior four years because of former President Joe Biden’s mass migration agenda that forced Americans to compete for homes against newly arrived migrants.

Vance said:

I’m a little surprised by when the Democrats talk all the time about affordability. Democrats say, ‘You know, things aren’t affordable, this isn’t affordable, this has gotten more expensive, drugs have gotten more expensive, housing has gotten more expensive,'” Vance said.

And you know what, they’re right. And it was because of them. It ain’t that hard. If you go back to the four years of the Biden administration, why did housing get so expensive, double in price during the Biden administration? It’s because Joe Biden let in 20 million illegal immigrants who took homes that by right go to American citizens and to the people of this great state. [Emphasis added]

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner said the fact that housing prices surged as Biden imported millions of migrants to the United States shows “it’s not a coincidence, it’s a correlation.”

A HUD investigation published this month found that Biden’s importing of millions of migrants drove up prices for Americans who are low-income but who do not receive public assistance.

“One key cause of elevated worst-case needs is immigration. Between 2021 and 2024, the foreign-born population of the United States increased by more than 6 million—the largest such increase over such a short period in American history,” the HUD probe found.

“This immigration-driven increase in households has contributed to a significant increase in housing demand, thus driving up housing prices,” the HUD probe continues. “In fact, in some markets, immigration has accounted for nearly all of the increase in housing demand in recent years.”

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.