Immigration Law

Government Spends $12,500 for Each Person Deported from U.S.

By Robert A. Kraft

Yesterday, immigration and Customs Enforcement deputy director Kumar Kibble told a House subcommittee hearing that it costs approximately $12,500 to arrest, detain, and deport each person removed from the United States.

This is only one of several reasons that most immigration lawyers believe deportation of illegal immigrants is not a workable solution to our current immigration problems. 

In 2010 ICE deported about 393,000 people from the United States, and the cost was almost $5 billion. It's estimated that 11 million people are currently in the U.S. without authorization. Extrapolating the ICE figures, it would cost the government almost $140 billion to deport them. We simply cannot afford to do that.

Full post as published by Immigration Law Answers Blog on January 28, 2011 (boomark / email).