Texas Spends More on Illegal Immigration Than on Its Entire State Police Force

The Bill Comes to $13 Billion a Year

Texas taxpayers shell out roughly $13 billion annually for services tied to illegal immigration, including public education, emergency health care, and incarceration, while the Texas Department of Public Safety operates on a budget of about $4.2 billion. That gap is not a rounding error; it is a policy choice made in Washington and tolerated in Austin.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform updated its state cost study in 2023 and found that illegal immigration imposes a net fiscal burden of $13.85 billion on Texas. The largest share, about $7.9 billion, flows through public K-12 schools as districts hire bilingual aides, expand free and reduced-price meal programs, and stretch bond capacity. Hospitals and county clinics absorb another $1.9 billion in uncompensated care. Jails and prisons add roughly $800 million when illegal aliens are arrested for state crimes after crossing unlawfully. Those figures do not include the $4.2 billion taxpayers spend each biennium on Operation Lone Star, the state border mission now in its fifth year.

Every dollar diverted to these costs is a dollar not spent on roads, teacher raises, or water infrastructure. Working families in the Rio Grande Valley and East Texas understand this math better than any think tank. Their property tax bills keep climbing while the services they rely on remain underfunded. The state does not have a revenue problem. It has a sovereignty problem.

Wages Fall When Labor Floods In

A 10 percent increase in the supply of low-skill immigrant labor correlates with a 2 to 8 percent drop in wages for native-born workers without a college degree, according to a review of labor economics literature by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Texans working construction, landscaping, and food service feel that pressure every payday.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that Hispanic men without a college degree saw real weekly earnings decline in 2024 even as overall job growth looked healthy on paper. That is not because Hispanic workers are lazy. It is because too many employers prefer a shadow workforce they can pay off the books. Legal immigrants who played by the rules get undercut right alongside American citizens. And both groups know exactly who benefits: contractors, hotel chains, and agribusiness giants that write campaign checks while ordinary Texans pick up the social tab.

Enforcement is not cruelty. Enforcement is a wage floor. When Immigration and Customs Enforcement audits a meatpacking plant or a construction site, wages for legal workers rise within months. The National Academy of Sciences has documented this relationship across multiple decades. Populists should not apologize for wanting less competition at the bottom and more respect for the law.

The Border Is Not a Theoretical Problem

In fiscal year 2025, Customs and Border Protection recorded more than 1.6 million encounters along the southwest border, down from the peak but still far above the roughly 400,000 annual average during the previous administration. Those numbers translate into crowded shelters, strained hospitals, and classrooms where English learners now outnumber available bilingual teachers.

Texas has sent thousands of National Guard troops and Department of Public Safety troopers to the river for Operation Lone Star. The state has spent more than $4 billion on barriers, busing, and overtime. Local sheriffs in Kinney, Val Verde, and Maverick counties have repeatedly asked the legislature for reimbursement because their jails cannot hold repeat human smugglers without crowding out every other function. The federal government sends the problem. Texas pays the invoice.

Meanwhile, sanctuary jurisdictions such as Travis County still refuse detainer requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That means violent offenders who should be deported walk out of county jails and disappear. In 2024, the Department of Homeland Security reported that criminal aliens released by non-cooperative jurisdictions committed thousands of additional offenses. Texans have every right to be furious.

What Austin Should Do Instead

State lawmakers can cut these costs by mandating universal E-Verify for public contractors, ending in-state tuition for illegal aliens, and requiring cooperation with federal immigration detainers instead of sanctuary policies. Those steps cost little and send a clear signal that Texas citizenship still means something, especially to legal immigrants who waited their turn.

Universal E-Verify works. Arizona adopted it for employers in 2008 and saw the share of illegal workers in certain industries drop sharply within two years. The Texas Legislature should expand its current E-Verify requirements beyond state agencies to every county, municipality, and school district that takes state money. Penalties should be real: lost contracts, suspended business licenses, and debarment from public work.

Texas should also end the in-state tuition subsidy created in 2001 that rewards illegal aliens with discounted college rates while out-of-state American citizens pay full freight. That policy was sold as compassion. It functions as an incentive. Finally, the legislature should ban sanctuary policies outright and authorize the attorney general to withhold state grants from any jurisdiction that refuses a lawful detainer.

The choice is straightforward. Texas can keep borrowing and taxing to manage a crisis Washington created, or it can enforce the law and protect its own workers. The Alamo Post stands with the taxpayers, the legal immigrants, and the working class. The border is not just a federal problem. For Texas, it is the problem.