The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a report at the end of 2017 citing that more than one-in-five of all prison inmates were illegal immigrants. That's around 30 percent of the federal prison population.
President Trump’s Executive Order on Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States requires the DOJ and the DHS to collect this relevant data and provide quarterly reports on data collection efforts. Trump is using this information to show taxpayers just one of the costs the government has to allot for.
Nearly 20,000 other immigrants were held in pretrial detention in contracted facilities by the U.S. Marshals Service, costing the government $134 million for just three months.
"The American people deserve a lawful system of immigration that serves the national interest," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said. "But at the border and in communities across America, our citizens are being victimized by illegal aliens who commit crimes. Nearly 95 percent of confirmed aliens in our federal prisons are here illegally."
The government said it had 57,820 immigrants in its prisons as of Dec. 31. Of that number, 20,240 (51 percent) were unauthorized aliens who are subject to a final order of removal and 14,979 (38 percent) remain under ICE investigation.
“Every crime committed by an illegal alien is, by definition, a crime that should have been prevented,” Sessions said. “It is outrageous that tens of thousands of Americans are dying every year because of the drugs and violence brought over our borders illegally and that taxpayers have been forced, year after year, to pay millions of dollars to incarcerate tens of thousands of illegal aliens.”
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