Immigration Crackdown - the Reality: Enforcement and deportation costs skyrocket

The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch is doing a very thorough investigative reporting series on the reality of the government's immigration crackdown. The paper calls the series, "Deportation Nation."

Enforcement and deportation costs skyrocket | The Columbus Dispatch: "It would cost each U.S. taxpayer about $500 to deport all 11.1 million immigrants estimated to be living here without permission.

On average, each deportation cost taxpayers more than $6,000 in 2010, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget numbers.

The amount Americans spend annually to detain and deport immigrants increased by more than 100 percent since 2005, to $2.55 billion in 2010. During the same period, the number of people deported more than doubled, to more than 390,000. ...

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency responsible for enforcing immigration laws, has been referring re-entry cases to prosecutors in the hope that the prospect of prison time will send illegal immigrants a message: Don't come back.

Prosecuting and imprisoning illegal immigrants takes up much of the federal court system's time.

Almost half the cases prosecuted in federal courts during the first 11months of 2010 were immigration-related, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, which gathers and analyzes data from public agencies.

Federal courts heard more cases that involved illegally entering the country, a misdemeanor punishable by up to 180 days in jail for the first offense, than for any other crime, including drug offenses.

In February, Judge Sam Sparks of U.S. District Court in Austin, Texas, questioned prosecutors about the value of prosecuting people with no "significant criminal history" for immigration-law violations. His docket, like many others in federal courts across the country, was awash in immigration-related cases.

The cost of prosecuting immigrants with no criminal history other than re-entering the country, rather than deporting them again, "is simply mind-boggling," Sparks wrote."The U.S. Attorney's policy of prosecuting all aliens presents a cost to the American taxpayer at this time that is neither meritorious nor reasonable."" Dec. 28, 2010