The real costs of illegal aliens

This is in response to two letters in the Sun Journal (Jan. 24) concerning the border wall.

I did some fact-checking on what illegal aliens cost U.S. taxpayers every year. According to the Bureau of Justice, 26 percent of all inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens, costing $1.42 billion a year. According to Forbes, illegal aliens collected $18 billion in Medicaid funds in 2018. The Franklin Center for Governmental and Public Integrity estimated that illegal aliens cost a total of approximately $116,000,000,000 per year — that is $116 billion.

Spending $5 billion as a one-time expense of building a wall is only common sense, and America can take care of its citizens.

Donald Dubuc, Minot