As more families enter the country illegally, it costs the U.S. Border Patrol more to take care of them.
Agents apprehended 25,000 immigrants traveling as parts of families in southwestern Arizona over the past six months and expect to spend four times as much on food, baby products, and on-site medical care in 2019 as it did last year, an official told the Washington Examiner.
Border Patrol’s Yuma Sector, one of nine on the southern border, spent $300,000 on diapers, formula, food, and basic medical care for those in its custody in fiscal 2018.
As of March 31, the halfway point into fiscal 2019, the sector had spent $600,000 on those same items and services. It now expects to hit $1.2 million by Sept. 30, according to sector spokesman Justin Kallinger.
Yuma has seen the third-most apprehensions nationwide of immigrants who traveled with a family member to the U.S. Apprehensions of people who illegally crossed the Colorado River to enter the U.S. from Mexico in that region have quadrupled in Yuma in the first six months of 2019 compared to the same period last year.