What were federal, state, and local spending impacts of illegal immigration in 2024 by category (education, healthcare, policing, welfare)?

1. What the major players are claiming: big headline totals and politics

Right-leaning groups and some House committees have produced headline totals—FAIR’s recent study and related write-ups put annual costs of “illegal immigration” in the $150–182 billion range and break those costs across federal, state and local budgets ^{[3] [1]}. The House Budget Committee amplified similar totals and framed them as a border-enforcement and welfare burden ^{[7] [8]}. These figures are widely cited in media and by advocacy organizations as evidence of large fiscal stress ^{[2] [9]}.

2. What nonpartisan research actually measures: CBO’s narrower, multi-year view

The Congressional Budget Office takes a different approach: its April 2024 report estimates the incremental effect of the 2021–2026 surge on federal budgets and projects that increased immigration raises both federal revenues and mandatory spending and interest, with net effect—over 2024–2034—of lowering deficits by about $0.9 trillion; it also estimates $0.3 trillion added to mandatory outlays and interest over that same decade ^[4]. CBO’s state-and-local study for 2023 finds costs are concentrated in certain states and localities and that data are limited; CBO highlights shelter, school, and border-security spending in a small number of jurisdictions as the main drivers ^[5].

3. How the spending breaks down by category in available reporting

Exact 2024-by-category federal/state/local line-items for “illegal immigration” are not uniformly tabulated across sources; however, patterns appear in the reporting: (a) enforcement and detention budgets rose substantially at the federal level—CBP and ICE budgets and detention appropriations were much larger in FY2024 (CBP ~$19.6B, ICE ~$9.6B; detention $3.43B cited) ^[10]; (b) Medicaid emergency-care spending for non‑citizens was highlighted as a multibillion-dollar item in House analyses referencing CBO work ^[8]; (c) shelter, housing, food and local services drove large state and city spending increases in places like New York and parts of Massachusetts, Chicago and Denver ^{[5] [6]}; and (d) education and K–12 costs are noted by CBO and others as part of state/local spending but are aggregated rather than split by unauthorized-status children in national totals ^{[5] [4]}.

4. Education, healthcare, policing and welfare — what the sources say, and what they don’t

• Education: CBO and state reporting say public school crowding and related costs were important drivers of state/local expenditure growth tied to the surge, especially in a handful of districts, but national per‑category totals for K–12 that are attributable solely to unauthorized immigrants are not provided in these sources ^[5].
• Healthcare: House committee press releases and analyses emphasize Medicaid emergency-service costs for noncitizens as “billions” (citing CBO’s work); CBO’s federal study notes mandatory program outlays rise as new immigrants and their U.S.-born children eventually qualify for benefits ^{[8] [4]}.
• Policing/enforcement: Federal enforcement and border-security budgets jumped—CBP and ICE funding rose and detention spending was singled out as large in FY2024—creating major federal outlay increases ^[10]. Some state law‑enforcement programs (e.g., 287(g)) shift responsibilities to local agencies, generating local costs ^[11].
• Welfare (cash transfers and other benefits): FAIR and some commentators count welfare and benefit spending in their large totals; CBO’s federal analysis focuses on mandatory programs over a decade and finds revenues partly offset those costs—CBO does not produce the same one-year, aggregated “illegal‑immigration” net-cost figure that FAIR reports ^{[3] [4]}.

5. Why estimates diverge: methodology, scope and attribution

Differences arise because groups measure different things: FAIR, DOGE and some committee products produce cross‑level annual “net cost” estimates that attribute many state/local expenditures to unauthorized status and include dependent U.S.‑born children ^{[3] [2]}. CBO isolates the incremental effect of the post‑2021 surge on federal budgets and models long-run impacts on revenue and mandatory spending—producing multi‑year projections rather than a single-year, all-government price tag ^{[4] [5]}. Advocacy reports often use broader attribution rules and select states/cities with acute pressures; CBO and academic work emphasize data limits and distributional nuance ^{[5] [12]}.

6. Bottom line and caveats for readers

There is no single authoritative 2024-by-category federal/state/local ledger of “illegal-immigration” costs accepted by all parties in the materials reviewed; big headline totals (around $150–182B) exist in advocacy and some committee reports ^{[3] [1]}, while CBO’s nonpartisan work finds mixed effects—higher federal mandatory spending but larger revenue gains that reduce deficits over 2024–2034 ^[4]. Readers should weigh who produced each figure, what they included (e.g., citizen children, shelter, long-run vs single-year effects), and note CBO’s caution that state/local spending impacts are concentrated and that public data remain incomplete ^{[5] [4]}.