The White House Council of Economic Advisers published a report this week estimating that the net fiscal cost for each undocumented immigrant to American taxpayers over their lifetime is $166,716 dollars, according to a statement released by the White House on Wednesday.
The document, titled The Real Cost of Socialism in America , was prepared by the economic advisory body of the Trump administration and presented as an argument against the Democratic proposals for mass amnesty and open borders.
The figure does not represent an annual or immediate expense, but rather an accumulated projection up to age 78, calculated in 2026 dollars and discounted by the tax revenues generated by that population.
For the entire population of undocumented individuals currently residing in the country, the Council of Economic Advisors projects an overall fiscal cost of between $1.4 and $1.9 trillion.
The report warns that a mass amnesty would significantly increase spending on various federal social programs.
According to official estimates, the SNAP food assistance program would incur annual new costs ranging between $3.6 billion and $4.7 billion; housing assistance from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) would increase by $2.3 billion to $3 billion per year; and Medicaid would rise by $30 billion to $40 billion annually.
Together, those three programs would add between $36 billion and $47 billion to federal spending each year, or between $361 billion and $475 billion over a decade.
The analysis goes beyond immigration policy and projects that the complete package of proposals from the Democratic Socialists of America — which includes Medicare for All, student debt cancellation, a 32-hour workweek, and the Green New Deal — would cost taxpayers $49 trillion over ten years, equivalent to more than $350,000 per American household.
The Trump administration presented the report as a contrast to its own results on border issues: more than 3 million undocumented immigrants have left the country since Trump resumed power, and apprehensions at the southwest border decreased by 94% compared to the monthly average during the Biden era.
Maintaining that pace of departures until 2029 would reduce the federal spending burden by between $26.7 billion and $33.7 billion annually, according to the Council of Economic Advisers itself.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) also doubled its workforce from 10,000 to 22,000 agents during Trump's second term, and has arrested more than 10,000 gang members and over 2,100 known or suspected terrorists.
However, independent economists and organizations such as the Cato Institute and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) question the scope of the official analysis.
According to the ITEP, households of undocumented immigrants contributed approximately $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022, including about $25.7 billion in contributions to the Social Security system, which they generally do not have access to.
The Cato Institute estimated in 2026 that this population reduced the accumulated federal deficit by approximately $1.7 trillion between 1994 and 2023, noting that the administration's calculations project costs under a hypothetical amnesty scenario with full access to federal benefits, rather than the current situation.
The report is published amid the mid-term electoral campaign, with the November 2026 elections as a backdrop, at a time when immigration policy remains one of the central themes of the American political debate.
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