Most Americans are aware of the typical modes of spending on the country’s burgeoning ‘diverse’ population. The US government, state governments, and local governments fund trillions of dollars’ worth of food stamps, housing assistance, direct cash payments, race-based programs for healthcare and now wealth redistribution, among other priorities. These spending priorities keep the ‘diverse’ population out of the abject poverty which is common in much of the world and ensures that their minority political priorities remain at the top of every agenda in the country.
Still, this is not all of the spending which the American state undertakes on behalf of recent immigrants and their descendants. Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent by other departments of the Federal government, namely DHS, which facilitate the entry, legalization, and naturalization of non-Western immigrants into the United States. This is spending we are going to shine a small light on in this piece.
For the 2024 fiscal year the Biden administration has requested a DHS budget of some $103.2 billion, much of which is going to be spent on minority groups and particularly recent immigrants. The most obvious starting point in examining this spending would be the agencies which are explicitly charged with protecting America’s borders: Immigrants and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CPB – which includes the Border Patrol). Between taking office in 2021 and 2024 the Biden administration has increased the DHS budget by more than $7 billion, and Americans have only become less safe.
The combined budget of ICE and CBP will total some $27.8 billion, much of which will be spent facilitating the entry of illegal aliens and “parolees” into the United States. The best example of this is the immigrant detention program. DHS will hold an immigrant for an average of 55 days, according to the American Immigration Council, and at a cost of some $9,994 to the American taxpayer. During any given month for fiscal year 2023 both ICE and CBP can be expected to hold some 30,000 people between the two agencies. The agents which are supposed to be protecting America’s borders busy themselves with migrants: housing them, feeding them, and catering to their medical needs.
These numbers mean that the American state will spend at least $3.6 billion on detaining migrants. Most of these migrants will then be released into the United States with a full belly, a clean bill of health, and a plane ticket courtesy of FEMA.