WASHINGTON — A pair of Long Island lawmakers are demanding that Congress boost federal funding for states and localities seeking to lock up illegal immigrants convicted of crimes, noting that hundreds of millions of dollars from the Justice Department-approved program have dried up in the last two decades.
Reps. Laura Gillen (D-NY) and Andrew Garbarino (R-NY) wrote a letter Friday to House appropriators highlighting how the DOJ’s State Criminal Alien Assistance Program had fallen from $565 million in fiscal year 2002 to just $234 million as of last year.
“Taxpayers on Long Island should not pay the price for the federal government’s failure to secure our border and New York City’s reckless sanctuary city policies,” Gillen told The Post.
“Increasing funding for the SCAAP program will ease the financial burden borne by Nassau County and other local jurisdictions for holding convicted criminals who shouldn’t have been here in the first place.”
Gillen and Garbarino in their letter told Reps. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) and Grace Meng (D-NY), who serve on the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, that the reimbursements would go a long way toward reimbursing “counties, and local governments for the costs of incarcerating undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of crimes.”
“Enforcing our nation’s immigration laws is a core responsibility of the federal government. However, the failure to secure our borders has caused increased costs for many communities across the country which are forced to shoulder the burden,” they said.
The program, which is authorized to spend as much as $950 million, provides US taxpayer money to local authorities to cover salaries for correctional officers and other costs incurred by having to incarcerate non-citizens charged with a felony or at least two misdemeanors under state or local laws.
More than 5,000 criminal aliens have been arrested in the US so far this fiscal year, US Customs and Border Protection statistics show.
The NYPD has spent up to $21 million on safety and security costs grappling with the migrant crisis in the Big Apple, according to city data, to say nothing of the billions of dollars more for food, housing and medical services.
Gillen’s district comprises parts of Nassau County, which received more than $2.3 million in funding from the program in 2024, while Garbarino’s district covering Nassau and Suffolk counties, got $1.2 million that year.
In fiscal year 2023, Nassau received $3.6 million and Suffolk took $1.3 million, pointing to a downward trend.
The Biden administration had moved to terminate the program in its fiscal year 2025 budget request, but the GOP-led House Appropriations Committee has affirmed it as a “useful tool” in immigration enforcement, per the lawmakers’ letter.
“Without these additional resources,” they told appropriators, “local jurisdictions are being asked to do more with less and will struggle to keep up.”
The Post reached out to reps for Rogers and Meng for comment.
