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By Dan Gooding
Associate News Editor
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A new report suggests the money spent on deportations across the United States could be spent on funding over 925,000 schoolteachers or pay for over 5 million veterans' medical care.
The findings from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) showed federal tax dollars being spent down to the state and county levels, as the Trump administration has drastically ramped up immigration enforcement over the past 18 months with the goal of mass deportations.
The National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies has estimated that the federal government plans to spend $268.9 billion on its deportation plan over President Donald Trump's full second term, with funding allocated across the country based on priorities.
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Supporters argue the spending is necessary to enforce immigration law, deter illegal border crossings and carry out the administration's pledge to deport millions of people living in the country without legal status. Critics contend the costs are too high and could divert resources away from other domestic priorities.
“It’s ridiculous that investments to enforce the law are making headlines while the devastating consequences of breaking it went completely ignored under the Biden administration," a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson told Newsweek. "Illegal immigration costs American taxpayers over $150 billion every single year, and that number will only grow unless our nation’s laws are enforced. Deportations are absolutely vital to stop the bleeding."
A Necessary Cost?
Immigration enforcement has become one of the defining priorities of Trump's second administration. Since returning to office in January 2025, the administration has expanded ICE operations, pursued higher detention capacity, increased workplace enforcement actions and pushed Congress to provide additional funding for deportation efforts and border security initiatives.
"The [EPI] calculator doesn't measure the cost of non-enforcement. Just a couple of years ago, a historic surge in illegal immigration threatened to bankrupt even the largest and wealthiest cities in America," Jeremy Beck, co-president of NumbersUSA, which advocates for immigration reform, told Newsweek. "The most cost-effective way to undo the 2021-2025 border crisis is to encourage inadmissible migrants to return home on their own by removing the illegal-employment incentive to stay."
Spending Concentrated in Major Population Centers
Newsweek's analysis of the county-level dataset found that the highest estimated deportation-related costs are concentrated in some of the nation's most populous counties.
Los Angeles County, California, topped the list at roughly $9.25 billion, followed by New York County, New York, at $6.52 billion, Cook County, Illinois, at $5.11 billion, and Santa Clara County, California, at $4.96 billion.
King County, Washington; Harris County, Texas; Miami-Dade County, Florida; Orange County, California; Maricopa County, Arizona; and Palm Beach County, Florida, also ranked among the highest-cost jurisdictions.
The analysis reflects where large populations and immigration enforcement activity overlap, resulting in some of the biggest projected taxpayer expenditures in urban and suburban areas.
Included in the data are estimates for different services or jobs that might be funded with the money instead. In Los Angeles County, for example, over 24,000 teachers could be funded. In Cook County, which covers a large part of the Chicago area, EPI estimates over 154,500 public housing units could be funded, or 14,635 nurses.
How This Fits Into DHS' Budget
The EPI figures come as immigration enforcement consumes an increasingly large share of DHS' budget discussions.
The Senate Appropriations Committee's report on the fiscal year 2026 Homeland Security spending bill recommended $92.3 billion for DHS overall, including both discretionary funding and disaster relief spending.
At the same time, the Trump administration's fiscal 2026 budget request emphasized border security and immigration enforcement as central departmental priorities, with DHS describing the proposal as part of its effort to strengthen homeland security operations.
“We encourage all illegal aliens to take control of their departure with the CBP Home App. Through Project Homecoming, a cornerstone of President Trump’s immigration enforcement success, the United States is offering illegal aliens $2,600 and a free flight to self-deport now," the DHS spokesperson said. "Even with the new offer of a $2,600 stipend, the estimated cost of a single self-deportation via the CBP Home App is just $5,100, saving the American taxpayer over $13,000 per illegal alien.”
What Experts Are Saying
"The Trump administration's immigration policy is not just inhumane, it is also a huge waste of public resources," Heidi Shierholz, president of EPI, said in a statement accompanying the release of the calculator. "Every dollar spent on mass deportations is a dollar not spent on critical investments like education, health care, and affordable housing."
Gordon Lafer, a professor at the University of Oregon and research associate at EPI, argued that families are facing rising costs for housing, health care and education while federal funding is being directed toward what he described as sweeping immigration enforcement efforts.
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The report enters a broader debate over the economic consequences of mass deportation plans. Previous analyses from the American Immigration Council and other organizations have estimated that large-scale deportation programs could require hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending while also carrying broader economic consequences.
Jessica Vaughan, from the right-leaning Center for Immigration Studies, told Newsweek that the EPI analysis was not meaningful or useful.
"It fails to consider the many significant fiscal costs of illegal immigration, like the tens of billions spent annually on welfare, health, and educational services, not to mention the cost in lost job opportunities for Americans and legal immigrants, and the priceless benefits to all in terms of public safety and national security," she said.
"There is a cost for immigration enforcement, but it is more than offset by savings to taxpayers. Of course, the more that illegal immigrants can be persuaded to comply with the law voluntarily, the better for everyone."
Beck said that lawmakers in Congress need to pass legislation to reform U.S. immigration, including requiring employers to use the E-Verify system to ensure all workers have legal status.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told Newsweek that mass deportations, by their nature, are "extraordinarily expensive," and agreed that reform is needed.
"We're talking about vastly expanding arrests and detention, while stripping workers from local economies, separating families, and leaving taxpayers to absorb the costs," he said. "We don't need a costly and indiscriminate mass deportation campaign. We need an immigration enforcement system that is credible and effective: one that encourages compliance with the law, focuses resources on genuine public-safety priorities, ensures consequences are proportionate, and holds agencies accountable when they abuse their power."
What Happens Next
The EPI calculator is likely to be used by immigration advocates and local officials as Congress continues debating funding levels for DHS, ICE, and border enforcement programs. Whether spending ultimately reaches the levels projected by EPI will depend on future appropriations decisions and the pace at which the administration is able to expand enforcement operations.
But the new county-level analysis provides one of the most granular looks yet at how the costs of those efforts could be distributed across the country, highlighting the scale of the financial commitment required to sustain the administration's immigration agenda.
"The most cost-effective way to enforce immigration in the interior is to prevent illegal immigration in the first place. To that end, Republicans and Democrats should come together to pass the border bill marked up by the House Judiciary Committee last month," Beck said. "That's the only way we don't find ourselves in the same situation a few years from now."
Update 8/5/26, 6:25 p.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from DHS.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Gray R. Thomas
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