What are annual costs of detention and deportation for unauthorized immigrants (2020–2025)?
Executive summary
Estimates for detention-and-deportation costs vary widely: ICE’s publicly reported average removal cost of about $17,121 per person is one benchmark cited by investigative reporting [1], while advocacy and academic analyses model mass‑deportation scenarios that run into the hundreds of billions-to‑trillions of dollars—for example, a one‑time operation to remove roughly 11 million people has been priced at about $315 billion [2], and multiyear permanent‑deportation scenarios are projected to cost roughly $900 billion over 10 years [3] [4]. Independent groups estimate annual per‑bed detention costs near $57,378 and annual programs to detain or deport one million people could cost tens of billions per year [5] [6].
1. What the government reports and a commonly quoted “per‑deportation” figure
The Department of Homeland Security and ICE produce dashboards and operational statistics; journalists have reported an “average” government figure of about $17,121 to deport a person, which reporters use as a shorthand cost per removal [1]. ICE’s public ERO dashboards provide arrests, detentions and removals data but do not in themselves publish a single comprehensive annual cost for all detention-and-deportation activity in dollar terms in the material cited here [7].
2. Models that scale to mass deportation: hundreds of billions
Policy think tanks and advocacy groups model large‑scale scenarios and arrive at dramatically larger totals than the single‑case averages. Visual Capitalist summarized an analysis that values a one‑time deportation of roughly 11 million undocumented people at about $315 billion, a figure that bundles arrests, detention, legal processing and removal [2]. The Penn Wharton Budget Model, analyzing multi‑year campaigns, estimated that a sustained permanent deportation regime could add about $900 billion over the first ten years [3]. Cato’s commentary using CBO numbers reached a similar $900 billion five‑year ballpark when removing millions over a compressed period [4].
3. Where the big costs come from: detention capacity, processing and logistics
Multiple sources identify detention beds, facilities and associated logistics as the steepest line items. UnidosUS estimated annualized per‑bed costs around $57,378 per year, driving enormous recurring costs if bed counts are expanded at scale [5]. The American Immigration Council’s modeling finds detention construction and operation central to high cost projections and notes that scaling to remove a million people in a year would require vast new capacity and could cost as much as $66 billion in a single year for detention alone under conservative assumptions [8] [6].
4. Recent budget actions and the directional signal from 2025 funding
Congressional and administrative decisions in 2025 sharply increased funding for detention and deportation functions, which changes the annual fiscal baseline and makes short‑term costs higher. The American Immigration Council cited legislation that would direct roughly $29.9 billion to ICE enforcement and $45 billion for construction of new detention centers—numbers framed as the largest investment in detention and deportation in U.S. history and capable of supporting daily detention counts far above prior levels [9]. Reporting also cites overall federal appropriations for related enforcement reaching into the hundreds of billions in some accounts [10].
5. Operational realities that inflate per‑case costs beyond averages
Journalistic case studies show individual removals can exceed the “average” by a large margin when detention days, transfers, charter flights and prolonged legal processing are included. Bloomberg’s investigation traced a single case that involved 128 days in multiple facilities and flagged the government’s $17,121 average as a limited metric that understates variability and the cost of prolonged detention and transport [1].
6. Competing perspectives and limitations in the record
Advocates and academics emphasize long‑term economic harms and very high fiscal costs of mass deportation regimes, presenting large aggregated estimates [8] [3] [6]. Some commentators and policy shops use CBO‑derived inputs to reach similar conclusions about multi‑year fiscal burdens [4]. Available sources do not mention an authoritative, single annual total for detention and deportation expenditures covering 2020–2025 across all relevant agencies in one place; the figures above are either per‑case averages, scenario models, or appropriations that change the baseline [7] [1] [2] [3].
7. Bottom line for 2020–2025: wide range, driven by policy choices
If policymakers pursue only routine removals at historic scales, the government’s ~ $17k per removal figure is a useful reference point for case‑level costing [1]. If the government scales to mass‑deportation programs or vastly expands detention capacity, independent modeling and budget analyses put annual and multiyear costs in the tens to hundreds of billions, and total costs over a decade approaching or exceeding $900 billion in some scenarios [6] [2] [3]. Which number applies depends entirely on the scope of enforcement chosen—routine operations versus mass, sustained deportation—with published sources providing both the small‑scale and large‑scale estimates above [1] [3] [2].
Limitations and caveats: reported per‑person averages come from government or media aggregation and understate case variability [1]; mass‑deportation totals are modelled scenarios with assumptions about detention days, bed costs and program scale that drive large swings in estimates [8] [5] [6].