In an interview about immigration on NPR last month, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, stated that, of an estimated 21 million illegal aliens, (only) 168,000 are convicted felons.
That should prompt immediate DOGE action to stop the expensive (and time consuming) population-wide dragnet for which Trump has committed ICE, attempting to identify the (very) few who are, in fact, felons. Concentrate, instead, on deporting the 168,000 known to be felons, and leave identification and conviction of others to state and local governments (for deportation without any other Federal expense).
The financial benefits to the Federal government would be significant:
If it costs $1,000 to identify each undocumented immigrant and determine whether or not s/he is a felon, ICE would save as much as $20.8 billion that could be devoted to drug intervention at border ports of entry, even before considering the cost of deportation.
The millions of law-abiding individuals (not known to be felons), most of whom pay a federal income tax of at least $2,000 each year, account for a total of at least $41.7 billion annual tax revenue much of which could be lost by haphazard, indiscriminate identification and deportation.
Anyone who questions the foregoing statistics should be aware that they probably stack up well against some applied by DOGE to other departments.
By the way, from what budget was the expense to import white Afrikaner immigrants taken?
Joel Derby
Everett
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