Biden’s Border Legacy: A Financial Burden That Will Last for Years

We’ve all been there: you go out with friends, have a great time … then they leave you stuck with the bill. After four years of reckless, ruinous and arguably illegal Joe Biden administration policies, America will be stuck with a massive border bar tab for years to come.

President Donald Trump is busy keeping his promises to secure the border, remove aliens in accordance with the law, and hold noncitizen visitors and students accountable for the promises they made when getting visas to respect our country and its rules.

He’s been sued at every step by illegal aliens and their left-wing advocates. Lower-level federal judges—usually, but not always appointed by Democrat presidents and working in Democrat-dominated states—are ordering nationwide injunctions as a default, in cases filed on the flimsiest of legal pretexts.

According to former Attorney General Bill Barr, federal courts issued a total of 27 nationwide injunctions in the entire 20th century, but they’ve issued 79 against Trump alone this century.

As Trump tries to enforce the law, the full scope of Biden’s border bar tab is coming to light.

New York’s Roosevelt Hotel is a formerly grand Manhattan edifice that contributed to the city’s lucrative tourist trade. Biden’s policies of paroling inadmissible aliens and mass releasing them at the border brought millions who went to welcoming “sanctuaries” like New York.

The city not only offered free housing and other benefits to illegal and quasi-legal aliens but also rarely prosecuted them for any petty crimes they committed. Mayor Eric Adams scrambled to lease hotels and other buildings, spending around $4 billion in tax dollars a year on migrant support. The Roosevelt was just one of more than 200 make-shift shelters operating at the height of the crisis.

Since January 2025—contrary to what the Biden team had been saying for four years—the Trump administration was able to reduce illegal entry at the border by more than 90%, end illegal parole programs, resume internal enforcement, and cut off federal funding of nongovernmental organizations that facilitate mass migration. New York began closing its temporary shelters.

The Roosevelt is due to close as a shelter in June, but as of mid-May, there are still about 2,000 “migrants” there. The hotel is owned by the government of Pakistan, whose finances are in even more dire straits than ours, and which is preoccupied by resurgent conflict with India. After a couple of years of occupation by indigents from around the world, most of them unused to Western habits, the Roosevelt will need complete refurbishment before it can reopen to tourists.

According to one estimate, that can cost $50,000-$90,000 per room. With over 1,000 rooms, that means over $90 million for the Roosevelt alone, not counting the common areas. That’s just one of the city’s rented shelters. Who is going to pay to repair them all? New York taxpayers.

Shelter costs are only part of Biden’s border bar tab. Half a million unaccompanied alien children were let in. All should be attending school unless they are working illegally or being exploited by the supposed “sponsors” to whom Biden’s Health and Human Services handed them.

The healthcare costs for absorbing millions more indigents into Medicaid and Medicare are yet to be known. But given that the average alien let in under Biden is significantly less educated and skilled than the average American, expect the worst. 

Lower-skilled, lower-paid workers are more likely to be enrolled in government-subsidized health insurance programs. In 2024, average health care spending per person was more than $13,000. Assuming that only one in five illegal immigrants let in under Biden relies on government or charity healthcare, that’s $26 billion a year.

Then there’s crime. Among the millions of economic migrants Biden let in were many thousands of career criminals and gang members. Among the thousands housed at the Roosevelt Hotel were some pimps, thieves and gang-bangers. 

“Progressives” will say the answer is to stop prosecuting offenders, but in recent years, that recipe has only resulted in more dangerous streets and unhealthy living across our major cities. Belatedly, Democrats are electing candidates to office who enforce criminal law. This is good, but it will cost more money in police, prosecutors, judges, and jails.

Biden’s border bar tab is still racking up, as all these costs will continue until one of two things happens: an alien is removed, or he wins the legal right to remain and then pays more in taxes than he and his family consume in benefits. Both will take time, if they happen at all.

Originally published by Fox News.

Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation.

Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal by Simon Hankinson.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.