Rafael Carranza

The Arizona Republic

PHOENIX — It's not easy to determine the cost of deporting an undocumented immigrant from the United States.

As a candidate, President Trump promised to deport all 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S., but has since narrowed his focus to immigrants with criminal histories, a number many analysts put at about 2 million.

The president, in his revised budget appropriations for fiscal year 2017, asked Congress for an additional $1.15 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain, transport and remove undocumented immigrants.

Based on current estimates, the additional funds only would cover about 5% of the 2 million immigrants Trump seeks to deport.

There's nothing hard and fast about such estimates. The location, length of detention, country of origin and other factors can significantly add or subtract from the price tag.

Jose Escobar was held in a detention center in Texas for two weeks at an average cost of $180 a day, before being escorted onto a charter flight to El Salvador. Escobar had checked in at the ICE office in Houston in February for a routine appointment.

Escobar's lawyer said he had a pending deportation order after losing his Temporary Protection Status nearly a decade ago, and had been denied deferred action, or DACA.

"This (effort to increase deportations) is a major, major task ... and would require a large investment in immigration enforcement," said Ben Gigis, director of Labor Market Policy at the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank.

Government figures

ICE spent an average of $10,854 per deportee during the fiscal year that ended in September, said Yasmeen Pitts O'Keefe, ICE spokeswoman. "This includes all costs necessary to identify, apprehend, detain, process through immigration court, and remove an alien," she said in an interview.

Pitts O'Keefe said she was not authorized to provide the methodology used to calculate that number, indicating a public records request would be required.

More:Will local police carry out Trump's deportation orders?

That figure was a slight decrease from 2011, when Kumar Kibble, deputy director of ICE under former Department of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano, testified before a House subcommittee focused on immigration policy. He told lawmakers it cost ICE "approximately $12,500 to arrest, detain, and remove an individual from the United States."

Based on the government's most recent estimate, Trump's budget request would cover the cost of deporting nearly 106,000 more people this year. The supplemental funds for ICE for next year would cover an additional 138,000 deportations.

Those dollars would be spread across the entire deportation process: apprehension, detention, court proceedings and removal.

Apprehension costs

Apprehensions could become one of the biggest expenses if ICE decides to do the work itself as part of a more aggressive deportation policy, said Gigis of the American Action Forum.

In 2015, Gigis conducted a study using data from the government’s budget to estimate the costs of deporting all undocumented immigrants from the U.S. The study assumes that about 20% of the estimated 11.2 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. would leave voluntarily.

The federal government spends on average $4,800 to apprehend an individual, according to his study. That’s because ICE relies heavily on local and state agencies to hold unauthorized immigrants who've been arrested for other violations, Gigis said.

That practice has come under scrutiny by “sanctuary cities and counties” that refuse to cooperate with ICE.

If ICE is forced to go at it alone, costs could rise to as much as $27,000 per person, the study concluded.

Detention is the largest expense

Detention is by far the costliest part of deporting an undocumented immigrant, said David Bier, an immigration policy analyst with the libertarian CATO Institute.

“You have to pay to monitor them around the clock, you have to pay to feed them every single day, you have to tend to their other needs, health and so forth,” he said. “So it’s an extremely expensive project to detain everybody they arrest.”

More:Trump wants to expand deportations, but a report finds ICE already falling behind

It costs on average about $180 a day to detain an individual, with the average length of detention at approximately 30 days, according to the government's most recent data. Based on those figures, an average immigration detention costs $5,400.

“The only thing that comes close is the costs of actually hiring the agents to do the arrests,” Bier said.

Costs beyond deportation

Whatever the cost of deporting undocumented immigrants, it's a bargain compared with letting them stay in the U.S., said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies. The center is a research organization that favors less overall immigration and more immigration enforcement.

According to his calculations, unskilled undocumented immigrants use $74,722 more in public services than they pay in taxes over their lifetimes.

More:Trump increases deportations of formerly protected DREAMers

“The bottom line is if the costs are around $10,000 to deport someone ... then it looks like a good deal for taxpayers,” he said.

Deportations create other costs that are more difficult to calculate.

Escobar was the main breadwinner for his family. Now his family in the U.S. must find a way to make ends meet.

His wife, Rose Marie, said she has struggled since his deportation and is looking at other ways to provide for her two children, ages 2 and 7.

"I'm probably going to get another job ... which is gonna take away all the time away from my kids," she said. "Since this happened, I haven't been around my kids a full day."

More:These undocumented immigrants thought they could stay. Trump says deport them.

Contributing: Daniel Gonzalez, The Arizona Republic. Follow Rafael Carranza on Twitter: @RafaelCarranza