The federal agency that handles deportations spent more than $100 million of its money over the last few years to ferry illegal immigrant children around the U.S., according to calculations by a watchdog group that says the cash could have been better spent on enforcement. Government figures obtained by the Immigration Reform Law Institute through an open records request show Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent an average of $665 per juvenile in 2014, with most of that going to the cost of airplane flights to shuttle the children among government agencies, to relatives here in the U.S. or back to their home countries — if they’re deported.
At that rate, ICE will spend about $4.5 million flying just the children nabbed at the border in October, and somewhere north of $100 million since the surge began in earnest in 2014.
“It’s insult to injury on a massive scale,” said Dale Wilcox, executive director of IRLI.
He blamed President Obama’s 2012 deportation amnesty for young adult illegal immigrants, the so-called Dreamers, for the surge, saying it enticed tens of thousands of new migrants, particularly juveniles, to take a risk on making the trip.
Instead of being sent back, they are shuttled among various federal agencies until they are eventually delivered to their parents, other relatives or sponsor families — where they often disappear into the shadows.
He blamed President Obama’s 2012 deportation amnesty for young adult illegal immigrants, the so-called Dreamers, for the surge, saying it enticed tens of thousands of new migrants, particularly juveniles, to take a risk on making the trip.
Instead of being sent back, they are shuttled among various federal agencies until they are eventually delivered to their parents, other relatives or sponsor families — where they often disappear into the shadows.