O P I N I O N
Stand up. Speak up. It’s your turn.
Before entering public service, I spent part of my professional career reviewing and drafting environmental and economic impact statements. Those documents shape major public decisions. They are supposed to present facts clearly, test assumptions rigorously, and weigh both benefits and costs honestly. I learned quickly that the most important question is not what an impact statement includes—but what it leaves out.
That experience guided me as I reviewed the Department of Homeland Security’s economic impact summary for the proposed ICE detention facility in Merrimack.
The report claims that retrofitting the facility would generate $158 million in construction spending and support 1,252 jobs, along with $151 million in “contribution to GDP.” It further states that annual operations would support 265 jobs and generate $10.7 million in tax revenue.
At first glance, those numbers suggest a substantial economic boost. But the analysis relies on a standard input–output (I-O) model that measures gross spending effects—not net economic benefit.
That distinction matters.
An I-O model calculates how federal dollars ripple through a regional economy. It assumes wages are spent locally. It assumes supplier linkages stay in-state. It assumes no displacement of other economic activity. It does not measure opportunity cost. It does not compare alternative uses of the property. It does not evaluate long-term municipal burden. It counts transactions—not prosperity.
The document itself contains troubling inconsistencies. In its summary, it refers to “ripple effects to the Oklahoma economy”—a clear copy-and-paste error in a report supposedly prepared for Merrimack, New Hampshire. That alone raises questions about how carefully this analysis was localized.
The job numbers also deserve scrutiny. The headline claim of 1,252 construction jobs includes temporary, indirect, and “induced” employment—restaurant and retail positions projected to arise from construction worker spending. These are not 1,252 permanent New Hampshire jobs. They are modeled job-years during a limited retrofit period. The report even acknowledges that traveling crews are often used, meaning much of the projected local benefit could leave the state as quickly as it arrives.
During operations, only 162 of the 265 jobs are direct facility positions. The remaining 103 are induced estimates based on employee spending patterns. That assumes employees live locally, shop locally, and do not commute from neighboring states. Those are assumptions—not guarantees.
The tax claims are similarly incomplete. Because the facility would be federally owned, it would not pay local property taxes. Yet the report highlights millions in “supported” sub-county tax revenue generated indirectly through wages. It does not analyze the opportunity cost of forgoing alternative development that could contribute to the local tax base directly and long term.
Perhaps most striking is what the report does not measure: potential impacts on municipal services, policing, infrastructure, emergency response, traffic, or long-term property values. There is no evaluation of reputational risk for surrounding businesses. There is no sensitivity analysis if federal policy shifts and the facility closes or contracts.
Economic impact statements often highlight the upside while leaving out tradeoffs. But there is another irony embedded in this report.
The same modeling framework that celebrates the “ripple effects” of wages and spending at a detention facility is built on the fundamental economic truth that people contribute to local economies through work, consumption, entrepreneurship, and tax payments. That is precisely how immigrants—documented and undocumented alike—already contribute to New Hampshire.
Immigrants in our state own businesses, fill workforce shortages, pay rent and mortgages, purchase goods and services, and contribute payroll and sales taxes. They strengthen industries from healthcare to construction to hospitality. If we acknowledge that wages paid to 162 detention employees will generate retail and service jobs through local spending, we must also acknowledge that immigrant families already generate those same ripple effects—without the need for incarceration infrastructure.
New Hampshire’s economy depends on participation. It depends on people working, spending, and building community. Economic vitality is not created by detention beds; it is created by opportunity, stability, and inclusion.
This is not a debate about immigration enforcement policy. It is a debate about fiscal transparency and honest economic analysis. If the federal government intends to site a detention facility in Merrimack, it should provide a rigorous, corrected, and fully localized net-benefit analysis—one that accounts for opportunity cost, municipal burden, and long-term risk.
As someone who has reviewed impact statements professionally, I can say plainly: gross spending projections are not proof of economic advantage. They are simply evidence that money will move.
The people of Merrimack—and the taxpayers of New Hampshire—deserve more than multiplier math. They deserve a complete accounting of costs, alternatives, and long-term consequences.
Economic impact is not the same as economic benefit. And we should not confuse the two.