If you ever want to understand why legacy media is hemorrhaging credibility faster than a leaky stimulus package, watch what happens when it tries to weaponize arithmetic against common sense.

Recently, ABC News decided to present what it clearly believed was a jaw-dropping exposé: roughly $40 million spent to deport more than two million illegal immigrants in 2025.

Cue ominous music. Cue furrowed anchor brow. Then, cue the implication that fiscal apocalypse had arrived in the shape of an ICE bus.

Instead, the internet did what the internet does best. It grabbed a calculator.

Forty million dollars. Two million deportations. That is about $20 per removal. Twenty dollars. You cannot Uber someone to the airport for that.

And yet the presentation suggested scandal.

For years, Democrats and their allies have insisted that illegal immigration is “cost-positive.” They have painted a portrait of a parallel workforce that magically expands GDP, fills labor gaps, and somehow does all this while simultaneously qualifying for means-tested benefits, subsidized education, emergency healthcare, housing assistance, and a buffet of state-level entitlements.

It is a neat trick. The kind that only works if you never total the receipts.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform has repeatedly estimates that illegal immigration costs American taxpayers well over $100 billion annually when federal, state, and local expenditures are included. Even if one disputes the exact number, the categories are indisputable: public education, Medicaid, emergency medical care, incarceration, infrastructure strain. These are not ideological abstractions. They are line items.

Yet here comes a headline implying that $40 million is a grotesque extravagance.

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