Footing the Bill: Border Crisis Costs U.S. Billions

The ongoing crisis at the southern border is not just a security concern, but a major economic one. A recent report from the House Homeland Security Committee put the total annual cost of illegal immigration in the U.S. at as much as $451 billion. That includes direct costs like funding border patrol, along with indirect costs like law enforcement, housing, healthcare, and education .

President Biden and Democrats have touted increased border spending as a solution to the crisis, but the numbers show throwing money at the border is not working. A Townhall report on the economic impacts of illegal immigration reveals the number of border encounters has more than quadrupled under the Biden administration compared with the Trump administration, despite annual increases in the budgets for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

This one-two punch of economic and security threats is particularly affecting border districts, like that of South Texas Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz. "The nonsense of Biden with the destruction of our economy, plus terrorists caught on our borders, is simply unacceptable," she tells Fox News .

Likewise, Cochise County, Arizona Sheriff Mark Dannels says his community is bearing the financial and social costs of the border crisis. "Over the last two years in our county, we've booked 2,884 people for border related crimes, and last year we had 111-million fentanyl pills come in through Arizona," he tells Fox News . "My whole point on this is we are resource maxed out."

Dannels warns there is only so much they can do at the local level to mitigate these costs, without a change in federal border policy. "States and local sheriffs are doing everything they can to secure and keep their communities safe, while the federal government fails to even acknowledge it," he says.

"The federal government has abandoned us down here," he continues. "The White House and President Biden has abandoned us, and 51-percent of Congress has abandoned us."