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Listener Ryanne DeGood asks: 

What is the breakdown of the cost per day for a migrant to be detained by the U.S.? 

The Trump administration, aiming to deport 1 million undocumented immigrants a year, has directed ICE to conduct immigration raids throughout the country. In some states, like Nevada, arrests have jumped 300%. 

Taxpayer dollars are used to fund ICE operations. Congress is appropriating money from the U.S. Treasury, which is funded by taxes and debt, to the Department of Homeland Security, said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an immigration law professor at Ohio State University. 

ICE spent, on average, $187.48 for each adult, per bed, each day in the 2023 fiscal year,  according to documents from ICE. 

Those “per bed” costs also include the physical infrastructure that detainees stay in and personnel costs, Cuauhtémoc García Hernández said. 

The daily population throughout ICE’s detention center network stood at 36,804 adults, which amounts to $6.9 million a day. 

ICE has ramped up the number of people it’s detained this year, which means that overall costs will almost certainly be higher this year, Cuauhtémoc García Hernández added. 

Transportation costs

Meanwhile, the costs of actually removing immigrants will cost billions. Legal processing, which entails an administrative proceeding in front of an immigration judge, cost the Executive Office for Immigration Review (the agency that oversees the immigration system) an estimated  $1,720 per case in 2023, according to the American Immigration Council. 

And the cost of physically transporting the undocumented immigrant population, which consists of about 13.3 million people, back to their home countries, would amount to $24.1 billion, according to the AIC. That’s about $1,812 per person. 

Even before deportation, detainees are constantly moved from one facility to another. 

“We're seeing that very prominently in some of these high-profile instances of people being detained in Boston or New York, and within a day winding up in a detention center in Louisiana. Obviously that comes with a significant cost,” Cuauhtémoc García Hernández said.

Subsidizing local law enforcement

Local law enforcement agencies also have the ability to detain migrants. Some of them have entered into what is known as a 287(g) agreement, in which local and state authorities work with the federal government to enforce federal immigration laws. But this agreement  also costs taxpayers. 

“This year, we have seen more of those kinds of 287(g) programs being spread across the country,” said Felicia Arriaga, an assistant professor at Baruch College’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs.

In North Carolina, many migrants have been booked into local facilities because they had traffic violations, Arriaga said. 

“Traditionally, there have not been enough ICE officers to pick up every person who is deportable within the country, and so they really do rely on these local partnerships,” Arriaga said. 

If a migrant is booked into a local jail, ICE might issue a “detainer” asking the Sheriff’s Office to hold them as they decide whether to pick them up. The average daily cost of holding someone in detention for ICE is $71.44, according to a 2019 report from the North Carolina Justice Center 

That report also noted that the total annual cost of detention in local jails costs taxpayers $7.4 million. 

Localities and states that detain immigrants are able to apply for federal grants from the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program to get reimbursed for their expenses, Arriaga said. But local governments have borne the brunt of these costs because the program only reimburses those with certain convictions, according to the 2019 report. 

“People should know where their money is going in general. And unfortunately, I think we actually don't have enough consciousness around where our local funds are going,” Arriaga said.