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Trump, the front-runner in the Republican presidential race, has not fleshed out his proposal with many dollar figures.

But civic leaders from the Rio Grande Valley to El Paso, who rely on legal cross-border traffic, worry that it could be a bad deal for them.

“It is an anti-business, anti-job-growth plan,” said U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar.

“As my friends on the other side of the aisle would say, it’s a ‘jobs killer.’”

Trump’s immigration plan, now a central part of the Republican primary debate, represents what could be the most hawkish distillation of immigration proposals so far in the 2016 presidential race.

The former reality TV star says that in addition to increasing fees on the border, he would bring about the wholesale deportation of the nation’s estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants, seize the money they try to send home, and deny automatic citizenship to their U.S.-born children.

While critics say his plans are wildly unrealistic — if not impossible to attain — he has set a new mark for the rest of the GOP field and opened up new fronts in the immigration debate, particularly in the border regions of South Texas.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has made border security one of the hallmarks of his comeback campaign for president, advocates a more complex border strategy based on technology and “boots on the ground.”

Trump’s call for a “wall” across the 1,954-mile southern border has been variously estimated at costing between $20 billion to $30 billion.

There are currently about 650 miles of fence, mostly in urban areas between the Pacific Coast and the Gulf of Mexico.

He would also triple the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, to match the growth in the U.S. Border Patrol, which has tripled in size since 9/11.

Far-reaching affects

Trump envisions savings from lower health-care, welfare and education costs, though immigrant advocates say that their work contributes far more to the U.S. economy than they receive in social benefits.

But in border towns like Laredo, McAllen and El Paso, Trump’s plan also has set off alarms because of the far-reaching effects it could have on the lives of people who cross the border daily to work, shop, and transport goods.

Unless Mexico pays for the wall — which it opposes — Trump said he would jack up fees for business and work visas, border crossing cards, and ports-of-entry. Cuellar says that would be bad for Laredo, which logged 1.9 million truck crossings in 2014.

“The business community will be the first one to say, ‘What? You’re going to raise fees on trade, commerce and tourism?’ It’s basically shooting yourself in the foot.”

With approximately a million border crossing cards sold to Mexican nationals each year, backers of the plan say even a modest price increase for the so-called “laser visas” could generate millions for border security.

Civic leaders on the border, however, say the region’s economy is best served by lowering barriers to legal entry, not raising them.

“When you create added barriers to legal processes, that’s when you see an increase in undocumented immigration,” said El Paso Judge Veronica Escobar.

Earlier this month, at the close of an annual U.S.-Mexico summit in El Paso, U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke took part in a cross-border 10K race donning a white baseball cap that read “The Border Makes America Great.”

The El Paso Democrat made clear the hat was intended as a direct rebuttal to Trump, who had just presided over a media event in Laredo wearing a hat that read “Make America Great Again.”

O’Rourke, noting his city’s low crime rate, professed embarrassment at the existing border fence, telling visiting reporters that it is akin to “an awful fence that the East Germans would be ashamed of.”

Critics have questioned not only the price of a border-length wall, but also the cost of deporting the entire undocumented population en masse.

An analysis released Tuesday by the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress suggests that the average cost per person would be more than $10,000, for a total of $114 billion to remove 11.3 million people.

That figure does not count the social or economic ripple effects, especially in immigrant-heavy border regions.

“There are much broader costs in terms of what would be involved in actually going out and tracking down 11 million unauthorized immigrants who are deeply integrated into their communities,” said Marc Rosenblum of the Migration Policy Institute.

“Are we going to start knocking on doors and checking people’s papers? Are you going to go to the schools and hospitals? Stop people in the streets?”

Mass deportation feared

Some have noted that both near and far from the border, the disruption of mass deportation would be especially heavy in the sorts of businesses that made Trump rich.

“He’s been involved in the hospitality and construction sectors,” Rosenblum said. “Those are two of the most heavily dependent on unauthorized immigrants.”

One measure that could inflict more pain south of the border would be Trump’s threat to impound remittance payments from “illegal wages” to the families of unauthorized workers back home.

Immigrants in the U.S. sent home an estimated $22 billion to Mexico in 2013, money that has helped supplement family incomes, build homes and create new businesses.

Trump has not said how he would take the money, and many question its legality.