DHS says it costs $18,000 to deport an illegal. That's a crime, but worth every penny.

I saw a video a few weeks ago of Markwayne Mullin, the new DHS Secretary on Laura Ingraham’s show. He stated that it cost more than $18,000 per deportee to remove an illegal from the United States.  If you’re thinking that’s because we’re giving them swag bags and first class tickets home, you’d be wrong. At least that would be fast.  No, the $18,000 is what it costs to navigate an illegal through the justice system because of the labyrinth of laws and the hoops judicial activist “judges’ make the government jump through.

Mullins encourages us to imagine the cost of doing that to the twenty million illegals allowed in during the Biden administration.  That would be $360 billion!  And there would still be another 30 million illegals in the country.

All of this reminded me of a conversation I was having with a young person recently about the cost of illegals to the country.  In this case we were talking about housing.  I mentioned that one of the reasons that housing was so expensive is because there are 50 million illegals in the United States, and despite California’s insane Homeless Industrial Complex, most of them are not living on the streets, there or anywhere else.  They are living in homes. 

The population of the United States is approximately 350 million people, living in approximately 148 million housing units. That is an average of 2.4 people living in each house / apartment. Immigrants typically have a larger number of people living in their homes, according to Pew, 3.5.  Using that number, the 50 million illegal aliens in the United States live in 14 million homes / apartments. If those 50 million illegals were not here, the housing stock available for American citizens and other legal residents would increase by almost 10%.  To put that in perspective, on average the net number of new homes / apartments to hit the market each year is about 1.5 million. 

Needless to say, if an inventory of 14 million units was freed up over a 3-5 year period, the cost of housing across America would drop significantly.  There would of course, be consequences to that given that real estate is a key element of so many Americans’ net worth, particularly older individuals.  But it would be only one of the effects of removing 50 million illegals.

Others include education, healthcare, welfare and of course criminal justice and jobs. 

Let’s take education. Schools spend on average $16,500 per pupil educating their charges. There are approximately five million children of illegals living in the United States and going to school. Five million students times $16,500 equals $80 billion for education.  That number is actually conservative because the majority of illegals live in urban areas, where governments spend far more than average on schooling.

FAIR, the Foundation for American Immigration Reform, a relatively anti-illegal immigration organization estimates that the United States spent $41 billion in 2023 on healthcare for illegal aliens and their children. For some unknown reason that number is based on the laughably low 15 million illegals.  But we’ll keep it to give them the benefit of the doubt.

According to CIS, the Center for Immigration Studies, the average number of immigrant families receiving welfare is extraordinary. For perspective, 27% of the US born households receive some sort of welfare spending.  Among immigrants it’s… slightly higher.  Among Afghan families it’s 87%, Dominican Republic families 78%, Guatemala 77%, El Salvador 75%, Honduras 75%, Ecuador 70%, Mexico, 67%, etc.  As bad as these numbers are, in reality they understate the problem. Ostensibly illegal aliens are not supposed to receive benefits, but they do, and do so at higher rates than legal immigrant families, which are included in the above numbers.  As such, the above numbers are averages of both and therefore are lower than the percentages of illegal alien families on welfare. CIS estimates that taken together, illegal aliens cost American taxpayers $42 billion annually. 

Then there’s crime.  Not even thinking about the psychological and physical harm / damage violent crime does to victims, both individuals and businesses, illegals cost Americans tens of billions of dollars per year.  FAIR – again using their laughably low illegals numbers – estimates that at the federal level alone Americans spend $25 billion a year dealing with illegals in the justice system. Elsewhere they assert that states spend an additional $22 billion per year dealing with illegal aliens in their respective justice systems. 

All of that taken together, $80 billion for education, $41 billion for healthcare, $42 billion for welfare, $47 billion on justice equates to $210 billion per year spent on illegals by American taxpayers. 

All of the above are explicitly government expenditures. But there are also billions of dollars of additional NGO spending on illegals. Although no doubt with significant overlap as many NGOs are funded by the government. Then there are caveats, of course.  Some illegal aliens work and pay taxes, which would reduce that number.  Schools would be operating in most  places even if there were no illegal aliens, so that might reduce that number.  At the same time, most organizations and government agencies have a vested interest in keeping the reported number of illegals far below the actual number.  Plus, of course, the tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars of additional housing costs Americans face because there are 50 million illegals competing for the same housing stock.

Assuming that we stick with just the $210 billion number and divide it by 50 million illegal aliens in America, that would work out to about $4,200 per illegal per year. Compared to Mullin’s $18,000 per illegal deported, it sounds like we would save money by letting them stay.  But we wouldn’t, of course. And we shouldn’t.  Given that April 15^th was just a few days ago, all of this resonates as one is sitting down to write the IRS a check.  And if we had to include in that the impact of illegals on the housing market and wages, it no doubt would be much bigger. 

But illegal immigration isn’t just about money.  It’s about right and wrong and whether Americans are in control of our country and whether our laws mean anything.  If we allow some groups to get away with breaking the law with impunity, (and getting subsidized once they arrive) what message does that send to the rest of the people in America, and more importantly, what message does it send to the rest of the world, particularly the 3^rd world where most illegals come from?

Mullins is right to point out the cost associated with sending illegal home because it’s always helpful for people to visualize where their tax dollars are going and how the out of control judicial system is making it worse.

But, at the end of the day illegal immigration is far bigger than just dollars. It’s justice. It’s safety. It’s right and wrong. And sadly, it’s control of Congress! As grifters like Maria Salazar try to pass amnesty by calling it “Dignity”, we shouldn’t let them. She and other Democrats in RINO clothing would replicate Reagan’s worst mistake, on steroids. Although far too high, that $18,000 is worth every single penny. 

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Maggie Thatcher’s Timeless Wisdom: She could see America Circa 2026 From the Last Century…

Maggie Thatcher, easily one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century, was a no-nonsense woman.  She became Prime Minister of the UK in 1979 and would rescue her nation from the economic quagmire created by the policies of her leftist predecessors.

Maggie was the daughter of a merchant. And as one might expect as the daughter of someone who had to deal with customers and vendors and regulators and all the while make sure there was something left in the bank at the end of the month, she was a straightforward and pragmatic leader.

For someone born almost exactly 100 years ago, she had a vision of government and culture that we could use more of today.  She was something of a combination of Nostradamus, Mark Twain and a Cassandra rolled into one. 

Her thoughts and observations provide an extraordinary insight into many of our problems today.

And the clarity began even before she was Prime Minister. On the day before her historic election she said this: “If a Government can't protect citizens and their property against violence, vandalism and theft, there is little point in having a government at all.” If anything resonates with Americans today it’s the fundamental failure of government to do exactly that.

In blue cities and states across America we see examples of career criminals regularly unleashed on their communities only to later kill or rape innocents. From suddenly being found not competent to stand trial to having their sentences slashed because of their age or background, American blood is spilling because Democrats care more about the “rights” of criminals than they do about the lives of innocent citizens. Thatcher cared about innocent citizens:  “I personally have always voted for the death penalty because I believe that people who go out prepared to take the lives of other people forfeit their own right to live.”

She also had a clarity on the economics of leftism, saying “Let us never forget this fundamental truth: the State has no source of money other than money which people earn themselves. If the State wishes to spend more it can do so only by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more. It is no good thinking that someone else will pay - that 'someone else' is you. There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers' money.”

Maggie clearly understood what most American politicians don’t, which is that government can spend only as much as citizens produce.  Only through taxes or IOUs, can the government spend a single penny.  Given that our national debt is almost $40 trillion and our unfunded liabilities are approaching $100 trillion financed by a GDP of $30 trillion, another of her quotes drives home the reality: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

As a merchant’s daughter, Thatcher understood what so many of our career politicians don’t, because so many of them have never had jobs or been part of an enterprise that actually created wealth – and just to be clear, lawyers rarely if ever actually create wealth or anything else of value.  “We have been ruled by men who live by illusions ... the illusion that there is some other way of creating wealth than hard work and satisfying your customers.” She hit the bullseye with: “The patronage state is an arrogant state. It assumes it can spend your money better than you do. Yet it expects you to work for it in the first place.”

Her observations went beyond just justice and economics however.  She recognized a moral cancer when she saw one. “Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas.” Her prescience presaged the cancer of DEI a generation before it began wreaking widespread damage on the American Republic.

Along those same lines, she anticipated the evolution of the left’s political MO beginning with the ascent of Barack Obama, where every critique, criticism or disagreement was labeled racism, then expanded to every element of American politics:  Homophobic, Islamophobic, Sexist, etc. She clearly recognized the tactics: “I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.”

The Iron Lady addressed what would become one of America’s biggest problems when someone like Donald Trump, who is not a creature of the Swamp and wanted to upset the apple cart, came into office: “Whether it is in the United States or in mainland Europe, written constitutions have one great weakness. That is that they contain the potential to have judges take decisions which should properly be made by democratically elected politicians.” If there’s anything that characterizes America in 2026 it’s the army of black robe clad judicial activists who think they have the power to transform themselves into the Executive.  These leftist judges are making a mockery of our Constitution, and sadly, Congress and the White House are allowing them to do so.

She also understood the treachery of the elites that has been going on in America for decades. “There are too many people who imagine that there is something sophisticated about always believing the best of those who hate your country, and the worst of those who defend it.” From tedious Oscar speeches and championing of illegal immigrant criminals to the pillorying of men like Daniel Penny and Nick Shirley, the left does nothing so much as spit on fundamental American values and elevate those of deviants and the lawless. 

And she understood that the left was not only a danger at home, but was an equally dangerous threat on the world stage: “To the extent that the West is to blame at all for the ills of the Third World it is to the extent that the West created Marx and his successors, among whom must be numbered many of those who advised the Third World leaders in post-war years”. From the UN to the EU to the Democrat party, Marxism has probably caused more death and destruction across the country and around the world than probably any other philosophy in all of human history. 

And particularly resonant today is the fact that Thatcher understood what it meant to be an ally, saying this after allowing Reagan to use US bases on the UK to strike Gaddafi while other European allies wouldn’t allow him to use their airspace: It had the effect of cementing the Anglo-American alliance. What's the good of having bases if when you want to use them you're not allowed to by the home country. It made America realise that Britain was her real and true friend, when they were hard up against it and wanted something, and that no one else in Europe was. They're a weak lot, some of them in Europe you know. Weak. Feeble.”

There were many other jewels of course:

“Many of our troubles are due to the fact that our people turn to politicians for everything.”

“The price of freedom is still, and always will be, eternal vigilance.”

“Being powerful is a lot like being a woman: If you have to tell someone that you are, invariably, you are not.”

“Why in the world anyone in America is allowing another language (other than English) to be his first... I don't know”

Maggie Thatcher had a clarity of vision and an understanding of the nature of man and the nature of government that few Americans appreciate today and sadly, even fewer politicians. 

Most of these quotes were found on this site: 

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