“We are not even into February and the cost of illegal immigration so far this year is $18,959,495,168. Cost Friday was $603,331,392. There are at least 25,772,342 illegal aliens, not the 11,000,000 that have been reported for years, in our Country. So ridiculous! DHS”

— President Trump, in a tweet, Jan. 27, 2019

We often warn readers to be wary of false precision. This presidential tweet is a good example of this.

He describes, to the dollar, the alleged cost of illegal immigration — as well as the exact number of undocumented immigrants. But both numbers can only be estimates; there is no actual count of undocumented immigrants, and there is a big dispute over what kind of financial drain, if any, illegal immigration places on the United States.

The president indicates that these figures are from the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), but instead they appear to come from the president’s avid TV-watching. Here’s an image of a tally that recently appeared on the right-leaning One America News Network:



Looks rather similar! But it’s quite possible the president missed an important nuance. The OAN chart refers to “total aliens,” not “illegal aliens.” So it appears to be a number for all immigrants, not just illegal immigrants.
.........................................................................................

Cost of illegal immigration

If you do the math, Trump estimates that each undocumented immigrant costs the United States $8,545 a year, or more than $220 billion.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which seeks immigration limits, in 2017 estimated $8,075 per undocumented immigrant (and their children) to come up with an annual estimate of $135 billion, or $116 billion after accounting for economic contributions. (The group assumed 12.5 million undocumented immigrants.)

Trump’s numbers are “considerably higher than our estimate,” said David Ray, a FAIR spokesman.

..............................................................................................

Once again, we have an example of the president — who probably has access to more information than any other person on Earth — latching on to dubious numbers that he saw on television. Compounding this error, he apparently misunderstood one number, assuming “aliens” meant “illegal aliens,” and then tweeted it out to the nation as a new, unknown fact.