The southern border crisis costs American taxpayers around $451 billion per year for services provided to a record number of illegal aliens under the Biden administration, according to one estimate a Republican-led investigation cites.
In a 49-page report released Monday, the House Committee on Homeland Security found that nearly half a trillion dollars is being lost in the healthcare, law enforcement, education, housing, and other sectors due to an influx of illegal immigration in the past two years. The $451 billion figure takes into account the millions of illegal migrants released by Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s Department of Homeland Security, as well as 1.7 million so-called gotaways, the Center for Immigration Studies revealed in May.
“Every day, millions of American taxpayer dollars are spent on costs directly associated with illegal immigration and the unprecedented crisis at the Southwest border sparked by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ policies,” the committee staff report states.
“Only a small fraction is ever recouped from the taxes paid by illegal aliens, with the rest falling on the shoulders of American citizens and lawful residents,” it adds. “Mass illegal immigration, accelerated by Mayorkas’ open-borders policies, now represents a massive cost to the federal government and state governments alike, as well as the pocketbooks of private citizens and businesses.”
Anywhere between 16.8 million and 29 million illegal aliens currently live in the U.S., according to data provided by the Federation for American Immigration Reform and Yale University. Since President Joe Biden assumed office in January 2021, at least 3.8 million illegal aliens have entered the country.
Additionally, the House Judiciary Committee disclosed last month that the Biden administration has failed to remove more than 99 percent of the illegal immigrants who have been released into the U.S., or about 2.15 million, from Biden’s inauguration to March 31, 2023. In those two years, immigration authorities only removed 108,100.
The latest committee findings come as the House considers whether to advance or block Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R., Ga.) impeachment resolution of Mayorkas. The vote is set for late Monday.
“It is unconscionable for Secretary Mayorkas and President Biden to force the American people to pick up the tab for the crisis their border policies created,” House Homeland Security Committee chairman Mark Green (R., Tenn.) said in a statement provided to National Review.
“Communities across this country, from the smallest border town to our largest city, are dealing with depleted emergency resources, public housing crises, overwhelmed public-school systems, damaged or destroyed property, and overwhelming law enforcement costs — burdens these hardworking taxpayers were never prepared for, and should not be forced to pay,” the lawmaker added. “Today’s report outlines the devastating costs of refusing to enforce our nation’s laws and reaffirms the Homeland majority’s urgent demand for Biden and Mayorkas to end the failed policies that are threatening to bankrupt our cities and states.”