From Marginal Revolution:

The Anti-Nanny State

by Alex Tabarrok on June 21, 2014 at 7:15 am

A new report from the Migration Policy Institute calculates that:

The US government spends more on its immigration enforcement agencies than on all of its principal criminal federal law enforcement agencies combined. In FY 2012, spending for CBP, ICE and US-Visit reached nearly $18 billion. This amount exceeds by nearly 24% total spending by the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Secret Service, US Marshals Service, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) which stood at $14.4 billion in FY 2012.

In other words, the Federal government spends more on preventing trade than on preventing murder, rape and theft. I call it the anti-nanny state. It’s hard to believe that this truly reflects the American public’s priorities.

That kind of spending by the federal government on defending the borders is as crazy as if the City of Omaha spent more of its budget rounding up stray dogs than fighting pirates off the coast of Somalia.