Joe Biden and His Appalling Budget Priorities

March 21, 2023 8:18 am

The Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation published a report this month that analyzes the costs of the border problem — as caused by President Joe Biden — and the findings are startling.

The report says Joe Biden wants to “increase spending by $98.6 billion over the Fiscal Year (FY) 2022–FY 2030 period on budgetary accounts and programs that facilitate — rather than control — the border crisis.”

“A high value is placed on allowing as many illegal aliens into the United States as possible and making the American taxpayers provide their transportation, shelter, food, medical care, education, and more during the lengthy, indefinite period needed to determine final immigration status in each case,” according to the report, titled The Costs of Biden’s Border Crisis: The First Two Years.

“Very few resources are allocated toward deporting the millions who fail to qualify for asylum or other immigration benefits.”

Members of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforce America’s border security and immigration laws. But study authors Erin Dwinell and Hannah Davis warn Biden intends for those two agencies to spend $33 billion less during the next several years.

Dwinell is a senior research associate in Heritage’s Border Security and Immigration Center. Hannah Davis is a research assistant at the center.

Among the other facts the Heritage report cites:

• From Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 to FY 2021, the number of aliens removed by ICE dropped from 185,884 to 59,011 respectively. The average number of illegal aliens detained daily dropped in 2021 to the lowest it had been seen since 1999, even as monthly encounters at the border soared to record levels.

• The Biden Administration would reduce spending for the U.S. ICE Operations and Support account by $21.7 billion over the FY 2022–FY 2030 period. This account funds mission support, immigration enforcement and removal operations.

• The Biden Administration’s re-direction of funding includes carving out billions of dollars in massive U.S. aid bills to fund refugee resettlement programs and reallocating taxpayer-funded government resources to process aliens illegally crossing the border into the United States more quickly.

• Joe Biden would increase spending for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Operations and Support account by $7.1 billion over the FY 2022–FY 2030 period. This budgetary account is used to fund the E-Verify program, which acts as a deterrent to illegal immigration. However, the Biden Administration would transform this account, adding billions of dollars in new spending to pay for the immigration application processing fees of aliens. Illegal aliens claiming asylum are not charged fees, even when their claims are fraudulent or frivolous.

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“More than 5.7 million illegal aliens crossed the U.S. border in the first 24 months of the Biden presidency (between encounters and aliens evading encounter or apprehension). As historic numbers of illegal aliens continue to cross the border and disperse throughout the country, every state has effectively become a border state,” according to the Heritage report.

“The nation is subject to significant preventable expenses and countless crimes committed by illegal aliens. As taxpayers demand change from Congress, elected officials should hold the Biden administration accountable and put an end to disastrous federal funding priorities and policies that endanger America’s lawful society and national security.”

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