Claiming "[t]here's a ... new study out" detailing the “taxpayer costs for illegals,” 630 KHOW-AM host Peter Boyles on July 5 apparently read from what actually was a mass email that compiled statistics from conservative anti-immigration activists and organizations, including Frosty Wooldridge, CNN host Lou Dobbs, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and the National Policy Institute (NPI). Included on the list was the claim that, as Boyles read it, "[t]hirty percent of federal prisons [sic] are illegals." Colorado Media Matters has debunked similar claims on several occasions, citing federal prison statistics.

From the July 5 broadcast of 630 KHOW-AM's The Peter Boyles Show:

BOYLES: There's a, a new study out. And there's a number of -- there -- finally, people are beginning to put some dollar figures and to taxpayer costs for illegals. The estimate: 11 billion to 22 billion dollars a year spent on welfare to illegals each year. Eleven to 22 billion. 2.2 billion a year is spent on food assistance programs -- food stamps, free school lunches, W-I-C [federal Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program]. These -- 2.5 billion dollars a year spent on Medicaid for illegals. Twelve billion a year spent on primary, secondary education for children here illegally, and they cannot speak a word of English. Seventeen billion dollars a year spent on education for American-born children, so-called “anchors.” Three billion dollars a day is spent to incarcerate illegals.

CALLER: You know --

BOYLES: Thirty percent of federal prisons are illegals.

CALLER: Oh, yeah.

BOYLES: Ninety billion dollars a year spent on illegal aliens for welfare and social services. This is all by you, by the American taxpayer.

While the conservative CIS released a controversial report in 2004 that, according to The Washington Post, “found that illegal immigrants in the United States cost the federal government more than $10 billion a year,” Boyles did not cite that report, or identify by name any other “study.” Instead, he apparently read from an email circulating over the Internet under the title “14 Reasons to STOP Illegal Immigration, With Supporting Documentation & Facts.” A copy of the email posted on JihadChat.com begins with the comment, “I hope these 14 reasons are forwarded over and over again until they are read by the majority of Americans. Then they will have something to yell at their U.S. Congress members.” During his broadcast, Boyles cited statistics mirroring those in the email but did not cite any sources for them. The original email did cite sources:

1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year.
http://tinyurl.com/zob77

2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.

http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.

http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

Boyles apparently misread the "$3 million a day" figure in the email, referring to the alleged cost of incarcerating illegal aliens as "$3 billion."

All of the sources for the purported “study” comprise links to conservative organizations or immigration critics. For example, the figure supposedly showing that "$11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year" comes from FAIR, which has faced bipartisan accusations of airing “racially inflammatory” anti-immigration ads with another group, the Coalition for the Future of the American Worker. The 2004 CIS study on the public cost of illegal immigration yielded two of the figures.

Many of the figures -- including the claim that “30 percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens” -- came from transcripts of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, hosted by immigration critic Lou Dobbs. Colorado Media Matters has noted Dobbs' refusal to correct the debunked claim that the United States had experienced “7,000 cases of leprosy” in three years recently due to illegal immigration.

According to the transcript of Dobbs' April 1 show, which the email links to, CNN correspondent Christine Romans stated:

At the same time, America's criminal justice system is bulging with these citizens of other countries. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 30 percent of federal prisoners are not U.S. citizens. At a cost of $63 a day, taxpayers spend more than $3 million every day to house non-U.S. citizen dollars in our federal prisons. Most are thought to be illegal aliens.

Contrary to the email's claim, which Boyles repeated, Romans did not state that 30 percent of federal prisoners are illegal aliens, but rather that 30 percent are “not U.S. citizens.” Her claim that "[m]ost are thought to be illegal aliens" is unsubstantiated and her “30 percent” claim is contradicted by data from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The bureau's latest inmate population report stated that as of May 26, 2007, 73.5 percent of federal prisoners are U.S. citizens and 20.8 percent are noncitizens -- not just illegal immigrants -- from Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic, while the citizenship status of 5.7 percent of the federal prison population is recorded as “Other/Unknown.”