Fact check: What is the annual cost of housing illegal immigrants in the US?

1. What people are claiming — the loudest numbers and where they come from

The most prominent numeric claim in the supplied analyses is that conducting a program to arrest, detain, process, and remove one million undocumented immigrants per year would cost at least $88 billion annually, a total that advocacy researchers frame as the minimum and that critics say could in practice be much higher ^{[1] [3]}. Another specific figure noted in the recent reporting is a $608 million federal reimbursement approved for a Florida detention center, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” which illustrates the scale of single-facility capital and operating reimbursements but does not represent national recurring housing costs ^{[2] [4]}. A separate, smaller international contract—$4.76 million to detain up to 300 migrants in El Salvador—shows how some costs are outsourced and negotiated case-by-case ^[5].

2. Why the $88 billion figure is not the full answer

The $88 billion number derives from modeling a very specific, mass deportation and detention scenario rather than measuring the ongoing expense of housing every undocumented person living in the U.S. under present policy. That modeling includes dramatic increases in detention capacity—“24 times more ICE detention capacity” in one account—and associated processing and removal costs, which makes it a scenario cost rather than a baseline operational budget ^{[1] [3]}. The analyses in the dataset consistently note that such figures reflect policy choices—whether to detain versus release on recognizance, or to pursue removals at scale—rather than an immutable per-person housing cost applicable under current practice ^{[6] [7]}.

3. Recent, concrete spending examples show scale but not totality

Contemporary reporting provides concrete spending snapshots that highlight fiscal stakes without producing an aggregate national total. The federal approval to reimburse $608 million for one Florida detention complex is a high-cost example of detention infrastructure support and demonstrates that single projects can cost more than many annual local budgets ^{[2] [4]}. Payments to foreign governments or contractors—such as the $4.76 million El Salvador contract—underscore that some detention-related spending is episodic and bilateral, further complicating any attempt to compute a one-line “annual housing cost” ^[5].

4. Data gaps and methodological limitations that prevent a clean total

The supplied materials repeatedly point to gaps in scope and accounting: sources address enforcement-driven scenarios, HUD eligibility changes, or labor-market effects, but none compiles comprehensive federal, state, local, and private-sector expenditures to house undocumented residents. Missing elements include shelter and emergency housing costs at the municipal level, non-detention forms of supervised release, and private costs borne by communities and NGOs; these omissions mean the dataset cannot produce a defensible national annual figure from its own content ^{[8] [7]}.

5. How policy choices drive dramatic cost variance

The analyses show that policy design is the primary lever of cost variance: aggressive detention-and-removal strategies create enormous up-front capital and recurring detention costs, whereas approaches emphasizing community supervision, case processing without detention, or local shelter support produce very different fiscal profiles. The $88 billion scenario presumes extensive detention expansion and removals, while alternative, less-enforcement-centric policies would reduce detention-line items but may increase other social-service or legal-processing expenditures ^{[1] [3] [8]}.

6. Political narratives shape which numbers get amplified

Different actors use different figures to advance competing agendas: enforcement proponents point to operational and security costs to justify tougher measures, while immigrant-rights groups highlight the humanitarian and long-term fiscal consequences of mass detention and displacement. The provided sources reflect these contrasting frames—one focuses on the catastrophic cost of mass deportation ^[1], another records the government’s willingness to fund large detention facilities ^[2]—which must be read as advocacy-informed claims rather than neutral nationwide accounting ^{[3] [4]}.

7. Recent developments matter but don’t close the accounting gap

The newest items in the dataset (October 2025 reporting on the $608 million reimbursement and related contracts) show that federal spending decisions continue to shift the landscape and can rapidly change projected costs for specific programs or facilities. These recent approvals and bilateral payments are crucial for understanding current commitments but remain insufficient to calculate an annualized national housing cost for undocumented immigrants because they are partial, project-specific, and tied to particular policy choices ^{[2] [5] [4]}.

8. Bottom line: what can be stated, and what remains unknown

From the supplied analyses one can conclude that there is no single, authoritative annual cost estimate for housing undocumented immigrants in the U.S. within these materials. The dataset does provide a scenario-based anchor—about $88 billion per year for a mass detention-and-removal program—and several concrete spending examples that show scale (a $608 million facility reimbursement; a $4.76 million contract), but it lacks a comprehensive ledger that aggregates federal, state, local, and private costs under current, realistic policy settings ^{[1] [2] [5]}. To move from scenario estimates to a reliable national annual figure would require consolidated budget accounts across agencies and jurisdictions, plus clarification of policy assumptions on detention, release, and service provision.