In testimony before the U. S. Senate Judiciary Committee, American Immigration Council ( AIC ) Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick remarked last week that mass deportations would cost “at a minimum”$ 316 billion.
According to the AIC, deporting one million illegal aliens annually costs an estimated$ 88 billion. That breaks down to$ 7 billion for arrests,$ 66 billion for detentions,$ 12.6 billion to go through the legal process, and$ 2.1 billion to transport deportees out of the country. It works out to$ 88, 000 per deportee, but the government claims this is a “highly conventional estimate”. They come to the conclusion that there is” a total cost of$ 967.9 billion over the course of more than a decade.”
However, a price that is less than one-sixth of what the AIC estimates when comparing the per deportee prices over the past few years can be seen. Companies that advocate for shock-value numbers, like AIC, are over.
When the$ 88 billion estimate was released in October, shortly before the election, news media extensively covered it. The AIC characters were cited blindly in The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek as well as on ABC, CBS, and CNN.
Another measure AIC put out, this “one-time”$ 316 billion charge of deporting 13 million, that was not reported by the media when they put out their record in October, comes to “at a minimal”$ 24, 231 per deportee.
Costs are a sure indicator of American public support, even though President Trump asserts that there is” no price tag” that is too high for deporting illegal aliens.
The additional cost of housing might not be as high as the$ 66 billion AIC promises because the figures don’t include ongoing federal subsidies for food and housing.
The AIC’s quotes depend on a lot of assumptions. Get their estimated costs of confinement, which account for three-quarters of their total measure. Not having enough detention facilities to building one million people for the entire time doesn’t mean you have to arrest one million people in a year. Even if you consider AIC’s claim that people may be detained for a little under two weeks on average, that would mean you would only need to home around 167, 000 at any given time. According to some experts, the typical detention period is around a month, but you only need to create facilities to accommodate 83, 000 people. According to AIC, we already have the facilities required to accommodate 41, 500.
The AIC assumes each center holds 500 rooms, but 83 new services will have to be built. With each facility costing$ 35.91 million, that comes to a cost of$ 3 billion, a fraction of the$ 66 billion.
Because 216 totally new facilities must be rebuilt each year, AIC’s numbers make things even worse, but that isn’t necessary because these facilities will last for years.
Additionally, they assume that a family’s daily value of detaining a person is$ 237 and a person is$ 482. In the United States, the normal cost for high-security prisoners is$ 64.87 and for prisoners in federal medium-security prisons is$ 122.50. Federal prisoners in privately run establishments merely receive$ 93.50 per day per person.
Even if the quotes were accurate, they might already be outdated, such as how much fugitives will remain in jail before being deported. The length of confinement depends on which household nations return these illegal immigrants, but President Donald Trump has stated in his campaign that” we won’t do business with those nations” who refuse to return them.
We may try to come up with our own little simpler calculate by looking at the ICE finances for Enforcement and Removal Operations rather than guessing numbers like how much it will cost the government to hire a plane, how many passengers will board it, or how much people will be detained. Therefore, we can compare it to the number of illegal creatures that ICE deported.
The finances of ICE does not include constitutional procedure costs, but it also overestimates the expenses to the point where it includes some customs-related enforcement costs.
Compare the monthly movement reports for immigration enforcement activities to the budgets for police and removal operations from 2015 to 2022. The 2023 monthly police actions report isn’t already available.
To be liberal on these charges, we exclude evictions according to Covid using Title 42, which averaged about 794, 000 persons from 2020 to 2022. Although ICE spent money to remove Title 42 detainees, these arrests are relatively inexpensive and won’t take place in the future. The cost per person eviction is greatly reduced by including these removal. For instance, 88 percent of the persecution during the Biden administration’s primary two decades occurred using Title 42.
Persecution have obviously decreased over time. Monthly persecution during Bill Clinton averaged 1, 536, 363, George W. Bush’s management had 1, 255, 779. Under Obama, there were 656, 112. Trump had 448, 852, and Biden carried out 316, 953. Evictions resulting from Covid are excluded from these statistics.
From 2015 to 2022, per person imprisonment charges in 2024 money averaged$ 12, 124. They range from$ 9, 767 under Obama,$ 11, 637 for Trump, and$ 15, 499 for Biden. As the funds increased, Biden’s numbers increased, but Title 42’s persecution decreased considerably. According to AIC, the constitutional processing costs are$ 2,570. If we simply accept that their measure is accurate, it raises the entire per capita cost of repatriation to$ 14, 705. Even this is very great, for a number of factors, including the fact that 1.46 million illegal immigrants have already had their arrests approved by immigration courts at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Even if we include the entire Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE ) budget, which involves many other customs activities, the per-deportee costs from 2002 to 2022 average$ 13, 706 in 2024 dollars. The year with the most deportations, 2004, saw 1.4 million deportees with a total ICE budget in 2024 dollars of$ 6.1 billion, or$ 4, 354 per deportee.
According to economies of scale, services with more arrests have lower per-deportee costs. If Trump actually does plan on carrying out large-scale persecution, the charges for each individual may be far lower than during his first management.
These figures also take into account the state and city laws of sanctuary places. Despite Trump’s border czar Tom Homan’s threat to imprison Denver Mayor Michael Johnston after the governor claimed he was ready to go to jail to guard the illegal aliens, Johnston continued to act against his word. If sanctuary places start assisting the federal government’s imprisonment attempts, the costs may even come along.
These traditional estimates are less than one-sixth to one-seventh the AIC’s per deportee measure.
Another measure AIC put out is a “one-time” value of$ 316 billion to deport 13 million, which wasn’t reported by the media when they released their record in October. That comes to “at a maximum”$ 24, 231 per deportee and shows the awareness of their quotes. Even that is almost twice as much as what is being stated here.
In September, the Deputy Director for ICE noted that of the 7.4 million “non-detained” noncitizens with pending situations that were released into the United States, 662, 566 have a legal document. Our estimations suggest that deporting and arresting these criminals would cost about$ 8 billion.
In contrast, if these illegal aliens commit a crime that resembles the most serious violence they have previously been convicted or accused of, abuse costs will be at least$ 166.5 billion. The National Institute of Justice estimated the prices to sufferers by including medical bills, lost wages, social/victim service, home loss/damage, police/fire service charges, and pain and suffering.
At least 21 times as much as imprisonment costs are the charges of murder.
You would hope that people would be wary when the AIC value estimates are six to seven times higher than the per deportee expenses that we have truly observed over the past ten years. However, the news media was only too eager to blindly repeat their claims.
