The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) estimates the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) immigration proposals could cost up to $613 billion over 10 years, compared with roughly $49 trillion in a White House release.
The Oct. 15 release attributes the larger figure to the immigration agenda, while the CEA report gives immigration a separate estimate of $440 billion to $613 billion. Its $48.90 trillion net estimate covers seven DSA policy pillars assessed against the federal budget for 2027-36, in constant 2026 dollars. The report’s summary table rounds the immigration midpoint to about $530 billion. Medicare for All accounts for $47.41 trillion of the broader total. The CEA did not assign a fiscal score to its third pillar, public safety, but it scored the eighth, a wealth tax.
The immigration estimate includes a scenario in which the current unauthorized population becomes eligible for SNAP, housing assistance and Medicaid. The CEA projects new annual costs of $3.6 billion to $4.7 billion for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), $2.3 billion to $3 billion for housing assistance, and $30 billion to $40 billion for Medicaid. Combined, those programs would cost an estimated $36 billion to $47 billion annually, or $361 billion to $475 billion over 10 years.
To estimate benefit costs, the CEA applied noncitizen participation rates from Brookings Institution research to the unauthorized population. Brookings says unauthorized immigrants are generally ineligible for the federal programs examined. Its participation comparison counts benefits attributed to noncitizen household members themselves; on that basis, noncitizens participated at lower rates than citizens in nearly all major programs studied. The modeled costs would fall on the federal budget, while people who became eligible could gain access to the programs.
The CEA also modeled the DSA’s broader amnesty and free-migration proposals against a current-policy trajectory. That scenario includes ending deportations and detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The report estimates the broader changes would forgo $227 billion to $287 billion in projected savings. It says ending an additional $148 billion in planned Department of Homeland Security enforcement spending would offset part of that amount, leaving a net cost of $79 billion to $139 billion. The $148 billion is the nominal planned increase for fiscal 2025-29 over fiscal 2024, not an inflation-adjusted figure.
The DSA’s 2026 program calls for ending detention and deportations, legalizing migration and granting amnesty regardless of immigration status. In a separate lifetime calculation, the CEA estimates a net fiscal cost of $166,716 per unauthorized immigrant through age 78, excluding reverse migration and mortality. It puts the total for the current population at $1.4 trillion to $1.9 trillion in 2026 dollars. The report compares its per-person estimate with a 2024 Manhattan Institute estimate of $130,000 for a new unauthorized immigrant.
