Tracking down illegal immigrants has become the dominant law enforcement priority of the U.S. government under President Barack Obama, according to a new study (pdf).

Last year, the administration spent nearly $18 billion on immigration enforcement, which was considerably more than the combined spending of other major federal law enforcement agencies, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.

In contrast, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spent a total of $14 billion.

The study also revealed that the Department of Homeland Security’s two main immigration enforcement agencies referred more cases to the courts for prosecution than all of the Department of Justice’s law enforcement agencies combined.

Officials with the Migration Policy Institute said their report was intended to show that the federal government has created “a formidable enforcement machinery” to go after undocumented immigrants.

This development was important to note, they said, because lawmakers in Congress, especially Republicans, have argued that the government hasn’t done enough to strengthen enforcement—a precondition before considering immigration reform and any effort to grant citizenship to the estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants currently in the U.S.

Critics of the report claim that its spending figures are misleading because it includes the budget of the Customs and Border Protection, which oversees land and seaport cargo inspections, having nothing to do with immigration.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

To Learn More:

Huge Amounts Spent on Immigration, Study Finds (by Julia Preston, New York Times)

Immigration Enforcement in the United States: The Rise of a Formidable Machinery (by Doris Meissner, Donald M. Kerwin, Muzaffar Chishti, and Claire Bergeron, Migration Policy Institute) (pdf)

Private Prison Industry Helped Create Anti-Immigrant Law in Arizona (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)