The southern border has been a mess since day one of this presidency. They have no plans to fix it.
And now a stunning discovery at the border has Republicans sounding the alarm.
The migrant crisis is draining American wallets far more than most people realize, and the numbers are staggering.
Last year alone, U.S. taxpayers were forced to cough up a jaw-dropping $150 billion to cover government services and support for the estimated 20 million illegal migrants currently in the country. This shocking figure comes from a study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which has been ringing the alarm bells on this issue for years.
But the real kicker? Most of this financial burden is being dumped on state and local governments, not the federal government.
Take Massachusetts, for instance, where Republican leaders are sounding the alarm over a $1 billion hole in the state’s budget. They’re accusing the Democrat-controlled government of quietly diverting taxpayer dollars to deal with the migrant crisis, all while keeping the public in the dark.
On Tuesday, the state’s Republican Party filed a Freedom of Information Act request, demanding that Governor Maura Healey come clean about Massachusetts’ full migrant budget. The GOP alleges that the true cost of the crisis has been deliberately hidden from taxpayers.
“The Healey-Driscoll Administration has shrouded nearly $1 billion spent in secrecy, leaving Massachusetts residents in the dark,” Republican leader Amy Carnevale told Fox News. “They have withheld critical information on 600 incidents involving police, fire, and EMT. Blocking journalists at every turn, the administration has obstructed the flow of information to the public.”
FAIR’s estimates paint an even grimmer picture. They project that in 2023 alone, the cost of state services for illegal migrants and their children in Massachusetts soared to around $3 billion.
In New York, the situation is equally dire. The state comptroller estimated that the migrant crisis would cost state taxpayers $4.3 billion by 2025, with New York City taxpayers on the hook for an additional $3 billion in fiscal year 2024. But FAIR’s estimates are even higher, projecting that the state’s 1.45 million illegal migrants and their children already cost taxpayers nearly $10 billion in 2023 alone.
Most states try to downplay the costs by focusing only on emergency housing and aid, but FAIR’s assessment takes into account the full range of services illegal migrants draw on while in the U.S. These include education, medical expenses, law enforcement, legal costs, and welfare — all of which add up to a massive financial burden on taxpayers.
FAIR’s analysis also includes the costs associated with U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, a factor that many other reports conveniently overlook.
“As long as we keep allowing millions of people to come into the country illegally every year, it’s obviously going to continue to increase the costs,” FAIR spokesperson Ira Mehlman told the New York Post. “This seems to be just sort of basic, common sense. If you’re going to be bringing in lots and lots of people, many of them working off the books for very low wages, there are going to be enormous social costs incurred,” he added.
And don’t think for a second that any state is escaping unscathed. Even West Virginia, which spent the least, still saw costs surpass $33 million to care for illegal migrants and their children. That’s just one of seven states that managed to keep their costs under $100 million.
Meanwhile, half of the U.S. states shelled out more than $100 million, and 19 states saw their bills skyrocket past the $1 billion mark. California led the charge with a mind-boggling $31 billion spent on illegal immigrants and their children, followed by Texas at more than $13 billion, Florida at over $8 billion, and then New York and New Jersey.
According to FAIR’s estimates, the total burden on American taxpayers was even worse, hitting a whopping $182 billion. Sure, illegal migrants do pay some taxes — FAIR estimated their contributions at about $32 billion — but that still leaves U.S. taxpayers with a $150 billion bill.
“The argument that illegal aliens pay more in taxes than they use in services is completely misleading,” Mehlman said.
The costs have ballooned dramatically since about 2017, when the true price of illegal immigration was estimated at around $116 billion, according to FAIR. That means the cost to U.S. taxpayers has jumped by about $35 billion in just five years.
And the crisis is only getting worse. More than 1.3 million people were released into the U.S. by Customs and Border Protection between March 2023 and July 2024 — not counting the untold numbers who slipped in undetected, known as “gotaways.”
“It’s an atrocity to spend taxpayer money to support and help people that don’t even have the lawful right to be here because the federal government has got policies in place that are allowing this to occur,” said Chris Clem, former Border Patrol chief of the Yuma sector in Arizona.
“This is another pull factor because all they have to do is get arrested, turn themselves in, and get released. They are getting opportunities that you and I don’t get.”
Stay tuned to the DC Daily Journal.
