DETENTIONS AND DEPORTATION WILL COST US

Currently thousands of law enforcement officers are directed to arrest undocumented immigrants. Because the crime rate among the undocumented is actually low, many of those arrested are not charged or convicted criminals. Their undocumented status is a civil, not a criminal, offense.

Large numbers of undocumented non-citizens are tax-paying, important members of our workforce. They build our homes, harvest our fruits and vegetables, pack our meat, staff our restaurants and beautify our yards. One member of a three-generation family of mixed citizens and non-citizens said, “I’m good enough to take care of your lawns, but not good enough to live here.”

The Trump administration mass deportation plan comes at deep human and financial costs. To arrest, detain, process and deport the administration’s immediate goal of 100,000 undocumented persons will cost close to $9 billion. This does not include tax dollars lost from working deportees or losses to industries, including Wisconsin dairy owners who depend on undocumented workers for their survival. If military transport rather than commercial planes continue to be used to deport, one flight can cost over $800,000. The average cost to detain a person in jail for 1 day is $120. Four years of detentions and deportations will cost billions.

As tax-paying citizens, will we look closely at the returns on the huge financial costs of deporting non-criminal undocumented immigrants? As human beings, will we find the decency to care about thousands of people who will be separated from loved ones and the work that enriches our country?

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