States paid 8.88 billion dollars on average to support illegal aliens
Executive summary
Claims that "states paid $8.88 billion on average to support illegal aliens" do not appear verbatim in the available reporting; CBO estimated more than $16.2 billion in Medicaid emergency spending for undocumented immigrants since 2021 (House Budget Committee summary) [1], and some single-state totals cited by Republican committees put California’s health‑care tally at about $8.4 billion for a year [2]. Independent advocacy studies and congressional reports place the broader fiscal burden in the roughly $150–182 billion per year range—but methodologies and definitions differ widely across sources [3] [4].
1. Headline math: different measures, different results
When sources publish big dollar figures they are often measuring different things. The Congressional Budget Office analysis summarized by House Republicans focused on Medicaid emergency services and produced a $16.2 billion figure since 2021 (federal + state emergency Medicaid spending) [1]. FAIR’s cost study estimates annual costs to taxpayers in the hundreds of billions (roughly $151–182 billion per year) using a broad set of services and population assumptions [3]. Other analyses and committee reports compile state shelter, school, health and enforcement costs to produce still different totals [5] [2]. None of the cited sources gives an explicit nationwide "states paid $8.88 billion on average" breakdown; available sources do not mention that specific per‑state average.
2. One big state, one big number: California’s $8.4 billion claim
Republican House Budget Committee materials cite California Department of Finance testimony that the state will spend more than $8.4 billion this fiscal year on Medicaid health benefits for undocumented immigrants, which the committee frames as state spending drawing down federal dollars [2]. That single‑state estimate is comparable to the mystery $8.88 billion figure in scale, but it is specific to one state and to health‑care programs—not a national per‑state average; the committee’s framing emphasizes a budget “gimmick” to access federal funds [2].
3. Nationwide tallies vary because of scope and accounting choices
Broad national totals—FAIR’s $151–182 billion and other estimates around $150.7 billion—include multiple categories (education, health, welfare, criminal justice, enforcement) and different populations (unauthorized immigrants plus their U.S.‑born children), producing much larger numbers than single‑program tallies [3] [4]. House Republican reports that sum enforcement, shelter, and other emergency outlays have produced estimates like $150.7 billion and higher, while CBO’s narrower analyses focus on specific program costs such as emergency Medicaid [5] [1].
4. Who’s producing the numbers—and why that matters
The largest publicized figures come from advocacy groups (FAIR) and congressional Republican committees and staff reports; each has an explicit policy agenda—restricting immigration or criticizing the current/federal administration’s border policies—which shapes chosen categories and assumptions [3] [5]. The House Budget Committee and Homeland Security Committee frame costs as consequences of federal policy choices and use CBO or state reports selectively to underline that point [1] [6]. Nonpartisan agencies such as the CBO produce narrower programmatic analyses; those are less sweeping but also avoid aggregating across disparate budget lines [7].
5. Where media and watchdogs push back
Analysts focused on health‑policy and legal context emphasize limits to what federal programs can legally spend on undocumented immigrants—e.g., PRWORA limits and Medicaid emergency exception—so some state expansions are primarily state‑funded or use complex financing to draw federal matching dollars, complicating headline claims about “federal” versus “state” burden [2] [8]. Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families warns that some political portrayals of Medicaid cuts as targeting undocumented immigrants are misleading because many such claim lines would hit lawfully present populations or be unconstitutional coercion of states [8].
6. How to read averages and per‑person claims
Per‑person or per‑state averages require transparent denominators: are totals divided by number of undocumented people nationwide, by states that received significant inflows, or by all 50 states? AEI and other think‑tank pieces that compute per‑taxpayer or per‑immigrant costs do so using model assumptions that other researchers dispute, so averages like "$8.88 billion" without an explicit method are uninterpretable [4] [3].
7. Bottom line for readers
There is credible reporting of large state and national costs tied to recent migration—single‑state health spending around $8.4 billion (California) and multi‑billion federal emergency Medicaid outlays totaling $16.2 billion since 2021 for emergency services are documented in the sources [2] [1]. Larger, headline‑grabbing totals in the $150–182 billion range come from broader cost studies that aggregate many categories and rely on contested assumptions [3] [4]. The specific claim that "states paid $8.88 billion on average" is not found in the supplied materials; available sources do not mention that exact average figure.