To wit, the Regime is spending over twice what it actually costs to detain an illegal alien in a contract jail facility in new friendly facilities for illegal aliens. This also eats up the detention budget, which lowers the number of aliens detained, which means more aliens released to either fight their deportation forever or who never appear for their deportation hearing. (Something my blog warned about in 2009. )
Washington Examiner September 25, 2014 by Paul BedardThe comparison to a cheap motel is interesting, especially in that a motel is not appropriate, but even worse, a motel is still more expensive than the traditional contract housing for illegal aliens held for deportation hearings: city and county jails.Report: $266 A Day To House Each Illegal, $117 More Than A Hotel Room
A new and critical report on the Obama administration’s treatment and detention of illegal immigrants reveals that it costs $266 a day to house each person for a potential total cost of millions daily.
The 11-page report from Detention Watch Network focused on the new detention facility in Artesia, N.M., and found that the 672-bed facility costs $266 per person to operate. The report also noted that overall, immigration officials detained 478,000 illegals in 2012, raising the possible detention cost to taxpayers to over $100 million a day. The local La Quinta Inn and Suites charges $149 a room and offers a kitchenette, free breakfast, free internet and free parking.
Throughout the country, the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), the U. S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), contract with local jails, private contractors, and State prisons to hold Federal prisoners before trial and sentencing, after which they are transferred to the custody of the BOP. The program is called an Electronic Intergovernmental Agreement (eIGA). ICE as a matter of policy, piggy backs on the contracts that the USMS has and the rates that the USMS has established throughout the country. ICE also establishes its own contracts, but usually uses the standard rates that the USMS develops for each calendar year.
The real comparison from the $266.00 a day that it is costing ICE at these Club Feds for illegal aliens is to the standard rates. Here is where the outrageous nature of the costs at these Club Feds is expose. In one of the most expensive counties in the United States, Essex County, New Jersey, the county where Newark, NJ is located, has a rate of only $105.00 a day. This rate is at the county jail, which provides all the necessities of an immigration holding facility: security and required medical services. It is not a nice place to be held and such facilities encourage illegal aliens to quickly acquiesce to their deportation, but the Club Fed recreational facilities, services, and amenities encourage illegal aliens to fight their deportation, and cost the taxpayer more.
Now, Texas is a much cheaper State, and the nearest equivalent cost for USMS and ICE prisoners that research revealed was Pinal County, Arizona, where the cost is $59.64, an area comparable to the Club Fed located in Artesia, New Mexico. So, the real comparison is to a cost less than a fifth of what ICE is paying. Pay more, get less, and encourage illegal aliens to remain to fight their deportation. That is why the Obama Regime is requesting billions for the ongoing border surge of Central American illegal alien family groups.
The real solution though is to use expedited removal to immediately deport all these Central American illegal aliens back to Mexico, from whence they entered illegally. Expedited removal is much cheaper than housing illegal aliens for deportation hearings, but spending $266.00 on detention facilities is a crime in itself.