$2,358 per person.
It’s a number that shows the impacts of President Donald Trump’s destructive economic agenda and bigoted anti-immigrant agenda in stark relief.
According to a new tool launched by the Economic Policy Institute, that’s the whopping amount American taxpayers are shelling out on average to fund Trump’s mass deportation push.
The progressive think tank’s new “Cost of Deportations Calculator” references the nearly $270 billion that Congress and federal agencies under Trump have already committed to immigration enforcement. The calculator basically shows the tremendous cost of Americans effectively underwriting the president’s depraved war on immigrants. (If you’re interested in getting wonky, check out the methodology here).
On its website, the institute lists various things that this huge pot of money could be going toward instead. For example, the organization estimated the money could fund 931,963 school teachers, more than 1 million firefighters or just under 12 million Americans on Medicaid.
And the calculator also allows users to cycle through all of the nation’s counties to get estimates about the taxpayer burden that Trump’s mass deportation agenda is placing on communities across the country.
Taken together, it’s a powerful tool in that it stands to remind Americans — who have already already shown broad discontent with the GOP’s handling of immigration and the economy — that the Trump regime’s anti-immigrant crusade comes with massive costs.
Human costs, primarily — as the growing death toll well proves. But financial ones, also.
The post Trump’s anti-immigrant crusade costs American taxpayers an estimated $2,358 on average appeared first on MS NOW.
