Undocumented Immigrants in U.S. – Mexico Border Counties: The costs of law enforcement and criminal justice services, September 2007.

“From 1999 through 2006, the 24 counties along the U.S.-Mexico border spent a cumulative $1.23 billion on services to process criminal undocumented immigrants through the law enforcement and criminal justice system. In fiscal year 2006 alone, the cost was $192 million. These are staggering costs considering the rural nature and poverty level of most of these border counties. The enormous fiscal impact of undocumented immigration on border counties is not a recent phenomenon. As governor of Texas, George W. Bush harshly criticized the federal government for failing to reimburse states and localities for costs of imprisoning undocumented immigrants. As governor, he supported a lawsuit that sought restitution for money that Texas had spent educating, incarcerating and providing medical care to undocumented immigrants. Governor Bush stated in 1995, “If the federal government cannot do its job of enforcing the borders, then it owes the states monies to pay for its failure.”1 When President Bush visited Yuma, Arizona in April 2007, he acknowledged undocumented immigration as a “serious problem”—for public schools and hospitals, and for “the state and local budgets.” He commented on how undocumented immigration brings crime to communities, and is “a problem [that] we need to address …aggressively.”2 Yet in each of his first six years as president, President Bush has proposed to eliminate the program established to reimburse states and localities. On June 28, the last chance to adopt an immigration reform bill faded when the reform proposal failed to pass a critical procedural hurdle in the U.S. Senate. The Congress, in fact, may not address immigration policy until after the 2008 general election. There is one way, however, that President Bush and the Congress can address the problem of undocumented immigration aggressively and with little controversy: reimburse border counties for the monetary consequences of the failed federal immigration and border security policies. This report provides the federal government with an accounting of those costs.”