Imprisoned illegals
March 2, 2008

The article on the front page of Friday's Sentinel had some very interesting statistics on the number and cost of prisoners, both in the U.S. and Florida. The elephant in the room that was not discussed or even mentioned was the number of illegals who are imprisoned in the U.S. and Florida.

The states that house illegals are forcing residents to pay for the horrible mess that the federal government has made by not securing our borders. As an example, take Florida with 97,000 prisoners as of 2007. If 10 percent of the Florida total are imprisoned illegals (hypothetically, since no statistics were cited), then the annual cost to the residents of Florida would be more than $231 million dollars (using the U.S. average cost of $23,876 each).

The thought that this amount of money is being spent incarcerating people who should not be here is very troubling. If we Floridians had an additional quarter-billion dollars to add to the budget each year -- new schools, health care for the poor, or other vital programs -- imagine!

DAVID PIERCE
Montverde

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