Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) revealed on Monday that the U.S. government spent roughly $151 billion on illegal immigration in 2023.
In a Monday post on X, formerly Twitter, DOGE wrote, “In 2023 alone, illegal immigration cost taxpayers $150.7 billion.” According to The Daily Mail, the cost of illegal immigration in 2023 represents 2.6 percent of the federal government’s $6.1 trillion in annual spending.
Emphasizing the high cost of illegal immigration in the United States under the Biden-Harris administration, DOGE put the total “in context with other costs” that were adjusted to reflect inflation. DOGE’s social media page noted that World War I cost the government $334 billion, the Apollo Space Program cost $257 billion, the Manhattan Project cost $30 billion, the Panama Canal cost $15.2 billion, and the Hoover Dam cost $1 billion.
According to The Daily Mail, the $151 billion spent by the U.S. government on illegal immigration in 2023 is comparable to the $151 billion the government spent on security programs for veterans and the survivors of veterans last year.
In Monday’s social media post, DOGE referenced a Federation for American Immigration Reform study from March of 2023 that showed illegal immigration cost the federal government roughly $151 billion. The study determined the cost of illegal immigration by subtracting $32 billion in tax revenue collected from illegal immigrants from a total of $182 billion in the “gross negative impact of illegal immigration.”
The Federation for American Immigration Reform study showed that illegal immigration “costs each American taxpayer $1,156 per year ($957 after factoring in taxes paid by illegal aliens).”
According to The Post Millennial, DOGE is expected to help President-elect Donald Trump’s administration by providing recommendations on how to reduce the federal government’s spending and the number of government regulations during the start of his second administration. Over the past few weeks, DOGE has shared multiple examples of the government’s waste in a series of posts on social media.
