News | San Diego
Immigrant cost study officially received by county board

1:10 p.m. September 25, 2007

SAN DIEGO – Direct expenditures by the county of San Diego in the 2006-07 fiscal year on behalf of illegal immigrants totaled $101.5 million, according to a report presented Tuesday to the Board of Supervisors.

Nearly half of that sum – $48.5 million – was spent by the Sheriff's Department to house inmates in area jails, according to the report by John Weeks, a San Diego State University professor and director of the school's International Population Center.

For those jail costs, the county was reimbursed $2.3 million by the federal government, according to the report.

The study was requested by the Board of Supervisors, which received the results at Tuesday's meeting and voted unanimously to pass the information to the county's congressional delegation and supervisors in other border counties.

“They're very telling findings,â€