Global Spending on Immigration Enforcement Is Higher than Ever and Rising
MAY 31, 2023
FEATURE
By Mark Akkerman
The United States has in recent years spent more money on immigration enforcement than at any other point in history. For fiscal year (FY) 2024, the Biden administration has asked Congress for nearly $25 billion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an increase of almost $800 million over the previous year and nearly equal to the entire gross domestic product (GDP) of Iceland. U.S. immigration enforcement budgets have been steadily increasing for many years, irrespective of the political orientation of the country’s federal government.
This is part of a worldwide trend, driven by the enforcement-first border and immigration policies of the Global North. The European Union's spending on border enforcement in 2023 was similarly at a record high, and border guard agency Frontex receives more money than any other single EU agency. While global spending for the sector is impossible to accurately measure, budgets for migration enforcement are on a consistent upwards slope.
Companies comprising the military and security industry are among the main beneficiaries of this spending bonanza. Building an ever more militarized and refined border infrastructure is a booming business, worth an estimated U.S. $48 billion in 2022 and on pace to grow to as much as U.S. $81 billion by 2030, according to market research agencies. Part of this growth will be driven by related industries such as biometrics and artificial intelligence, which are expected to be even larger sectors of which migration management is just one component.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/immigration-enforcement-spending-rising
