How much does it cost to deport 1 illegal immigrant? $12,500

From Yahoo News:

WASHINGTON – A high-level immigration official says it costs $12,500 to arrest, detain and deport each person removed from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deputy director Kumar Kibble has announced that cost at a House subcommittee hearing. Wednesday’s hearing focused on whether the Obama administration is doing enough to round up people working illegally in the U.S. ICE deported almost 393,000 people from the U.S. in 2010. At $12,500 per person the cost to remove them was almost $5 billion. (emphasis mine) An estimated 11 million people are in the U.S. without proper documentation.

The U.S. paid $5 billion in just one year for the deportation costs of fewer than 400,000 illegal immigrants (less than 4% of the current illegal population in the country). Add that to the cost of providing medical care to illegal immigrants and the cost of educating the children of illegals and pretty soon you’re talking about some serious money.

Using the estimate of $12,500 per person, it would cost $137.5 billion dollars to deport each and every illegal presently in the country. But of course, even if you deport a large majority of the illegal immigrants, unless we really make a serious effort to secure our border, many of them will come back.

Just how much plain brick and mortar fencing and how many extra border patrol agents could we purchase with that $5 billion a year?