What is the estimated cost of illegal immigration to Texas taxpayers?

1. Big Claims, Bigger Differences: Two Competing Topline Numbers That Drive the Debate

The debate over Texas’s fiscal burden features two dominant, conflicting topline claims: the Texas Attorney General’s press release cites a minimum annual cost of $855 million by summing lower-bound estimates across selected state services, while FAIR’s analysis—amplified in media reporting—estimates roughly $9.94 billion for undocumented adults and $13.36 billion when adding U.S.-born children of undocumented parents. The AG’s figure is constructed from narrow categories and conservative lower-range values such as uncompensated hospital care and Emergency Medicaid, producing an “at least” framing ^[1]. FAIR’s approach expands the scope, adds more benefit lines, and uses population estimates that yield much larger totals and a per-capita cost; this produces a very different fiscal picture ^{[2] [3]}.

2. What Analysts Include—and What They Leave Out—Explains Most of the Gap

Disagreements track back to which costs and credits are counted. The lower-end estimates focus on direct, itemized state expenditures such as uncompensated care, detention costs, and certain state-funded programs; they tend not to count federal spending, tax payments by undocumented residents, or long-term fiscal effects ^[1]. FAIR’s totals incorporate a broader set of services and more expansive population counts, and therefore inflate aggregate spending relative to narrowly scoped state-only tallies ^{[2] [3]}. Conversely, tax-revenue studies and some academic work argue undocumented residents pay billions in taxes—$4.9 billion in tax contributions in 2022 for Texas per one analysis—suggesting net fiscal impacts are smaller or even positive when revenues and long-term contributions are considered ^{[4] [6]}.

3. Government and Nonpartisan Studies Offer Intermediate, Qualified Views

Congressional and state budget analyses present intermediate or noncommittal findings: a House Budget Committee release projects very large national costs from the broader border situation but does not isolate a Texas figure, while CBO-style assessments estimate state and local net costs in the billions for 2023 without attributing a single Texas number ^{[5] [7]}. Academic work cited by Texas outlets (for example, at Rice’s Baker Institute) finds that benefits can outweigh costs in some years, noting the difficulty of precise measurement because of incomplete data and shifting migration patterns ^[8]. These sources emphasize uncertainty and complexity, cautioning against taking any single aggregate as definitive.

4. Methodology Matters: Population Counts, Service Definitions, and Timing Change Everything

Estimates vary because analysts make different choices about population denominators—whether to count undocumented adults only, include U.S.-born children, or include mixed-status households—and about which services to assign to state versus federal responsibility. Some calculations use monthly snapshots of hospital uncompensated care or short-term shelter costs and extrapolate to annual totals; others compile annual program expenditures and apportion them across estimated undocumented populations. These technical choices produce systematic biases toward larger or smaller totals, and partisan actors sometimes emphasize the figure that best supports policy goals—cost containment or immigrant-supportive arguments—so readers should weigh assumptions as strongly as the bottom line ^{[1] [2] [9]}.

5. What to Take Away: No Single Number Tells the Whole Story

The available analyses show that Texas faces measurable fiscal impacts, but the magnitude ranges from under a billion to well into the double-digit billions depending on scope and assumptions ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Tax contributions by undocumented residents, methodological caveats noted by nonpartisan studies, and the lack of a single, up-to-date state-level accounting mean policymakers and the public should treat headline totals as starting points for more detailed, transparent audits rather than final verdicts ^{[4] [6] [7]}. For policy decisions, the relevant questions are which costs are borne by state versus federal taxpayers, how benefits and taxes offset one another over time, and which data gaps need filling to produce a reliable, comparable fiscal estimate ^{[5] [8]}.