ANALYSIS: Illegal Immigrants: the Costs, the Profits, and the Risks

Dozens of recently arrived illegal immigrants camp outside of New York's Roosevelt Hotel, in New York City, on Aug. 1, 2023. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

As more illegal immigrants pour into the United States, The Epoch Times has examined the cost of housing and caring for them, who profits from their stay, and the potential risks involved.

The most recent report by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) shows that Customs and Border Patrol issued record numbers of Notices to Appear (NTAs) at United States ports of entry with 280,000 being issued in the first ten months of fiscal year 2023 (FY2023) and almost 45,000 in July alone.

According to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, a Notice to Appear (NTA), “is a document that instructs an individual to appear before an immigration judge. This is the first step in starting removal proceedings against them.”

TRAC’s September report showed a record-breaking 180,000 were issued in August, an increase of nearly 20 percent from July’s high of 151,910.

TRAC’s data also shows that the top five destinations illegal immigrants choose once they cross our border are fairly consistent.

New York City, with 14,084 new arrivals, remained the top destination. Harris County, Houston, Texas took second place with 6,178 arrivals. In third place was Chicago, Illinois, with 5,553. Los Angeles County, California claimed fourth place with 5,522 new illegal immigrants, and fifth place went to Dallas County, Texas, which saw 4,281 new illegal immigrants.

The Cost

An updated forecast from the NYC mayor’s office shows that asylum seekers could cost NYC’s taxpayers more than $12 billion through July 2025. So far for FY 2023, the city has spent $1.45 billion.

The New York Post reported on Sept. 25 that Mayor Eric Adams is preparing to renew contracts with local hotels to keep the illegal immigrants housed for up to three more years. The price tag, $1.365 billion, will not cover utilities, food, health care costs, or the education of their children.

In an Oct. 6 report, Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow at the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation, said “116,000 inadmissible aliens were flown or bused to New York City, mostly by private charities using government grants, over the past 18 months.”

Of those, he said “60,000 are still living on the city’s welfare” and the city’s taxpayers are “spending around $10 million per day to house them, more than $4.7 billion a year—an estimate that’s rising with every month.”

NYC’s comptroller reported in August that $10 million was added to the budget for “child care for undocumented children,” saying, “While a small amount comparatively, it will have a huge impact on families who need care and are ineligible for Federal or State programs.”

If they don’t get more U.S. taxpayer funds to cover the cost of NYC’s decision to provide sanctuary to illegal immigrants, the mayor is threatening to cut spending on other services from every agency that benefits New York’s taxpayers by 15 percent, the New York Post reported on Sept. 9.

Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow with The Manhattan Institute. (Courtesy of Nicole Gelinas).

Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow with The Manhattan Institute, says the move to fill hotels in NYC with illegal immigrants is also damaging New York City’s already fragile tourism industry, which still hasn’t recovered from the COVID-19 lockdowns.

According to the Empire State’s comptroller, NYC had a record high of 66.6 million visitors in 2019, generating $47.4 billion in tourism dollars. During the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, visitors dropped by 67 percent and their spending fell by 73 percent, costing the city around $1.2 billion in lost tax revenues.

NYC’s City Guide reported on Oct. 5 that “nearly all sectors of NYC tourism are experiencing the current headwinds.”

The rising cost of hotel rooms and the limited number of Airbnb listing approvals, it said, are “removing thousands of options for travelers.”

“We need the hotels to bring back the tourists, especially since they’re cracking down on Airbnbs,” Ms. Gelinas told The Epoch Times, adding that hotels like The Roosevelt and Holiday Inn were “middle-grade, bread and butter tourist hotels that are now off the market.”

Newly arrived illegal immigrants wait in a holding area at the Port Authority bus terminal before being sent off to area shelters and hotels in New York City, on May 15, 2023. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

She’s also concerned about the ethics of the “blanket” $275 million contract Mr. Adams signed between the New York City Department of Homeless Services and the Hotel Association to house illegal immigrants.

“They get these huge deals, effectively creating a monopoly rather than making the hotels compete with each other to get to lower prices,” she said.

While the Roosevelt once charged around $102 per room, the new room rate will be $190 per night. The deal is estimated to bring NYC around $2.8 million per month. However, a study released in March by the Federation for American Immigration Reform found it will cost New York around $9.9 billion to pay for things like health care, food assistance, education-related costs, and additional immigrant-related law enforcement to accommodate the more than 1 million illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers in the Empire State.

Who Profits?

Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and failing hotel owners—including foreign governments—appear to benefit most from the immigration crisis.

On June 5, a Pakistani news organization reported that “the government has finally leased out its precious asset in the United States—Roosevelt Hotel.” The hotel is owned by Pakistan International Airlines.

“Under this contract,” Federal Minister for Railways and Aviation Khawaja Saad Rafique is quoted saying, “we will receive US $220m that will enable us to clear the hotel’s various liabilities besides earning handsome revenue for our country’s treasury.”

Pakistan had plans to raze the Roosevelt and erect a new 100-story hotel. All they needed was money.

The lease deal also gives Pakistan guaranteed income for 18 months and the assurance that the near-century-old hotel will be returned to Pakistan in the same condition NYC received it.

Mr. Hankinson predicts this will be another expense for New York’s taxpayers.

Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation. Courtesy of The Heritage Foundation

“Imagine what kind of shape the Roosevelt is going to be in in three years,” he told The Epoch Times. “I’m sure they‘ll sue the city for having the hotel trashed and then they’ll get to renovate it at the government’s expense.”

Illegal immigrants sleep outside the Roosevelt Hotel as they wait for placement at the hotel in New York on Aug. 1, 2023. Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images

Pakistan isn’t the only bankrupt hotel owner to profit.

The New York Post reported in February that the mayor is also converting a Holiday Inn in downtown Manhattan into a shelter for illegal immigrants.

That property went bankrupt in 2022.

In January, Crain’s New York Business reported that a Manhattan bankruptcy judge approved a deal between hotel owner, Chinese developer Jubao Xie, and NYC Health + Hospitals to turn the now-vacant property into housing for migrant families and single women.

Mr. Xie is also struggling with debt, including $11 million in interest on loans.

Mr. Hankinson noted that “a lot of these hotel contracts are no bid.”

“They’re in a hurry and claiming emergency authorization. So you’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars of no-bid contracts,” he said. “New York’s mayor estimated they’re spending around $5 billion on housing illegal immigrants. So yes, some people are getting mighty rich off the whole enterprise.”

NGOs also profit from the illegal immigrant market.

In May, The Heritage Foundation reported that NGOs receive “billions of taxpayer dollars through numerous federal departments” like Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services to help the government “receive, process, transport, lodge, and counsel the illegal aliens.”

In June, Capital Research Center reported that “Nonprofits and NGOs are not only supporting illegal immigrants with food and shelter when they arrive at the border; they are funding and guiding their migrations from far away in Latin America.”

“We’re talking debit cards, maps, legal counsel, pamphlets to guide them on what to say to Border Patrol agents, etc.,” the report revealed, adding, “These organizations are using tax dollars and tax-exempt status to fund the operation.”

A Feb. 28 Department of Homeland Security press release revealed that the American Red Cross sits on a National Board chaired by a representative of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Emergency Food and Shelter Program. The board allocates funding to NGOs that support illegal immigrants. In February, FEMA’s shelter program received $350 million from the Department of Homeland Security.

“While they claim to be ‘non-profit,’ they use this money to pay their managers and staff extremely well,” Mr. Hankinson said. “So there’s a lot of federal money being dumped into the NGO world for migrant traffic.”

The Risks

In a video recorded Oct. 18 at the southern border, independent journalist Anthony Aguero asks a row of Syrian illegal immigrants where they are heading. The majority admit they are heading to New York. Others say Chicago, Texas, New Jersey, and Michigan.

Syria was the first country deemed a state sponsor of terrorism by the State Department.

A similar video from Sept. 29 shows illegal immigrants from Senegal, West Africa sharing the same destinations.

According to the U.S. Department of State, Senegal is a hotbed of terrorist activity which has destabilized the entire region.

Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal newspaper reporter kidnapped by Islamic extremists in Karachi, Pakistan. Getty Images

A bill, HR 6993, was recently introduced in Congress to designate Pakistan as an official state sponsor of terrorism.

Mr. Hankinson also pointed out how TRAC’s data only deals with the known number of illegal immigrants who received NTA’s. It doesn’t include the number of people who evade capture as they slip across our border.

On Oct. 17, United States Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens shared on social media that, “Over 18K known gotaways” crossed into our country during “the first 16 days of FY24,” adding, “These are individuals whose identities & purpose we do not know.”

Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (Courtesy of Ira Mehlman).

Ira Mehlman, the media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told The Epoch Times, “There has been an uptick in the number of people on the terror watch list that have been encountered.”

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 564 people on the FBI’s terror watch list have been arrested at America’s southern and northern border ports of entry in fiscal year 2023 so far. Last year there were 380. The year before, 157.

He also noted that those are only the ones we’re aware of.

“Since Mr. Biden got into office there have been 1.7  million known ‘gotaways,’ people who have come into the country without being encountered,“ he prompted, citing a Congressional report. ”Those tend to be people who understand that if they came forward for asylum they would be flagged. So they tend to pay the smugglers extra to get them across the border without being encountered.”

“Just look at what we’ve seen over the past two weeks,” he added, recalling the pro-Hamas/pro-Palestinian protests taking place in streets and on college campuses across the country.

The San Diego Field Office Intelligence Division of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sent a memo on Oct. 20, warning that members tied to the terrorist organizations of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad  (PIJ), and Hezbollah may be attempting to cross into the United States through its southern border.

On Oct. 25, the Daily Caller, which first reported on the CBP memo, confirmed that there is no special classification for Palestinians who are encountered and processed at the border, so officials have no way to report how many may already be in the country.

“Homeland Security is probably in greater peril than it has been at any time since or before 9/11. We have terrorist organizations like Hamas calling for global jihad,” Mr. Mehlman warned. “They are making threats not just to Israel but to all Western governments, particularly the United States. So there is every reason to be concerned about this and the fact that DHS has no idea where a lot of these people are is a very scary prospect.”