As pointed out ten years ago, mass deportation would pay for itself
The New York Times thinks that deporting the estimated 11 million illegals* will be financially impossible, and they have interviews with defeatists like Michael Chertoff (who managed to deport some illegals as head of Homeland Security under George W. Bush) and former Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar to prove it...
Where do they get these ideas? From bought and paid for think tanks.
One group questioning whether deporting illegal aliens is worth the cost: The American Action Forum (AAF)
One AAF report put the total cost of removing all 11.3 million illegals* living in the U.S. at between $420 billion and $619 billion. That is based on the assumption that 20% of the aliens would leave voluntarily [The Budgetary and Economic Costs of Addressing Unauthorized Immigration: Alternative Strategies, By Ben Gitis and Laura Collins, March 6, 2015]
But let’s do the math. Deducting those who would self-deport we are left with 8.96 million illegals that the U.S. government would have to forcibly deport. Dividing AAF’s low and high cost estimates by these involuntary deportees, we arrive at a per deportee cost ranging from $45,000 to $67,000. By comparison, ICE—the government agency in charge of deportations, estimates that it costs $12,500 to deport an illegal alien. [ICE reveals cost for deporting each illegal immigrant, By Mizanur Rahman, San Francisco Chronicle, January 27, 2011]...
Liberals play the same game. A decade ago (!), I looked into Deporting the Undocumented: A Cost Assessment published by the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think-tank. [No-one`s Suggesting Mass Deportation—But It Would Pay For Itself, VDARE.com, January 26, 2006] Touted as the first-ever estimate of costs associated with apprehending, detaining, prosecuting, and removing immigrants who entered illegally or overstayed their visas, the study put the cost of mass deportation at $206 billion over five years- $41 billion per year. The CAP study assumed that about 10 million illegals would be subject to deportation and 2 million would leave voluntarily if a mass deportation program was announced.
That $206 billion figure seemed absurdly large. The largest chunk of it, apprehension costs, was put at $141 billion. In arriving at this figure, researchers blithely assumed that the historical, abysmally low, deportee apprehension rates would continue under a mass deportation regime...
Mass deportation cost estimates have been inflated beyond reason. The deportation process will not be cheap, but once done, it is done. The benefits, in terms of reduced fiscal deficits, higher incomes, jobs created for displaced workers (native-born and legal immigrants alike) will, hopefully, go on forever.
CAIRCO Notes
* Of course, everyone by now knows that the stale, outdated, unchanging government figure of 11 million illegal aliens living in the United States can't be accurate. See CAIRCO research: How many illegal aliens reside in the United States?
It should also be noted that if we make it impossible for illegal aliens to work in the United States, and if we stop subsidizing illegal aliens with taxpayer paid education and welfare benefits, they will self-deport and go home to reunite with their families. At their own expense.
If there is any residual cost to deport the remaining illegal aliens in America, it could easily be covered by the billions in remittances sent by illegal aliens through trans-national banks to foreign countries. See: Remittances - a massive transfer of wealth out of America.