Immigration Spending Grows

From The Wall Street Journal:

The Obama administration spent more on immigration enforcement in the most recent fiscal year than on all other federal criminal law enforcement combined, as it invested ever-larger sums at the border and inside the U.S. to curb illegal immigration, according to a new report.

In the year that ended Sept. 30, the government spent $18 billion on immigration-enforcement programs, dwarfing the combined budgets of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Secret Service by about $3.6 billion, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

In fiscal 2012, a record 409,849 people were removed from the U.S., compared with 188,467 in 2000, according to the Homeland Security Department. But border apprehensions fell to a 40-year low, 340,252 in 2011, the latest figure available.

A Homeland Security spokesman said the department had no comment on the study.