Immigrant costs soar for border counties

Immigrant costs soar for border counties
Study: Police work saps funds from other services
Diana Marrero
Republic Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Illegal immigration is costing Arizona border counties millions a year for law enforcement and criminal prosecutions, diverting money from parks, libraries and other law-enforcement efforts, according to a study to be released today.

The costs to the four border counties in Arizona increased 39 percent, from $19.2 million in fiscal 1999 to $26.6 million in fiscal 2006, researchers at the University of Arizona and San Diego State University found.

For the nation's 24 border counties in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, the costs related to illegal immigration in fiscal 2006 were $192 million, more than double the costs in 1999.

The study was commissioned by the U.S./Mexico Border Counties Coalition, a non-profit group of border-county officials who want the federal government to reimburse their county jails and prosecutors offices for legal costs.

"The study is important because, for the most part, these border counties are small, they're rural, they're very poor, and this is a tremendous hit to their county budgets," Tanis Salant, a public-policy lecturer at UA and the study's main author, said in an interview.

The coalition, which began looking at the impact of illegal immigration on border counties in 1999, paid for the study using a Justice Department grant.

Researchers estimate the costs of illegal immigration on county law enforcement borderwide at $1.2 billion in the past eight fiscal years.

Researchers examined county budgets, court records and crime statistics and interviewed hundreds of county officials for the report. The report did not look at the impact of illegal immigrants on cities, states or Indian tribes.

The coalition wants Congress to spend more federal dollars on the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which gave border counties a total of $4.7 million in reimbursements last year.

The money was less than one-tenth of the actual costs the counties bore for detaining illegal immigrants, according to the report.

The group also wants more funding for the Southwest Border Prosecution Initiative, among other federal programs.

The costs of illegal immigration are placing "undue burdens" on people who live in border counties, the report says. Urban counties bore the highest costs, with San Diego County in California spending the most at $77.1 million, followed by El Paso and Hidalgo counties in Texas and Pima and Yuma counties in Arizona.

Residents of three Texas counties - Hudspeth, Terrell and Zapata - carried the costliest per capita burden, with each resident paying about $378, $126 and $112, respectively, last year.

The costs came at the expense of other county services such as libraries, jails, courtrooms and parks, according to the report.

Officials in Santa Cruz County, Ariz., for example, say they need more money to offer better amenities at their local parks; officials in Presidio County, Texas, say they don't have the money for a new ambulance they need; and officials in Imperial County, Calif., want to enhance other law-enforcement efforts.

Illegal immigration is creating budget problems for Cochise County, spokeswoman Karla Jensen said.

"It definitely has an impact, primarily with our law-enforcement and judicial systems," she said. "Law enforcement is one of our biggest expenses on our budget."