>> today a discussion on russia's efforts to influence left-wing causes and groups. there is foundation hosts this, live coverage started noon eastern on c-span2. watch c-span for live coverage of events honoring the life and career of senator john mccain. today is his funeral in phoenix where longtime senate colleague, friend and former vice president joe biden offer tributes. it starts at 1:00 pm eastern. after the service senator mccain's casket will be flown to joint base andrews in maryland. tomorrow morning congressional leaders will gather for a brief ceremony at the us capitol beginning at 11:00 eastern and

at 1:00 pm senator mccain's body will lie in state in the capitol rotunda for visits from the public. saturday morning at 9:00 eastern, cindy mccain will lay a wreath at the vietnam veterans memorial in washington dc honoring her husband's military service and at 10:00 am we are live from the washington national cathedral for a memorial service for senator mccain. speakers will include former president george w. bush and barack obama. >> each week at this segment of "washington journal" we look at how your money works. gretta goodwin of the account ability office joins us to talk about a new report that talks about incarceration and its costs to the federal government. start with the terminology we are using today. criminal alien is a term that is used throughout the report. what does that term mean? >> guest: a criminal alien is someone who is not a citizen or national of the us who has been arrested and convicted of a crime. we use the term alien because it is defined in statute, part

of the immigration and naturalization act. that is why we use the term alien. >> host: the could be legal or illegal. how many are currently in the criminal justice system right now? >> guest: we studied two populations. the first population, criminal aliens incarcerated in federal prison and the second study population, criminal aliens who are incarcerated in state and local facilities. so the first population, our study population was 198,000. the second population, our study population we did a subset, was 500,000. then when you look at the numbers in terms of the changes, i will talk about what our objectives were. we had two study populations. the first objective was to look

at the nationalities of criminal aliens incarcerated. the second objective was to look at the arrest and conviction of criminal aliens. the third objective was to look at the cost of incarcerating criminal aliens. the fourth objective had us look at the experiences of criminal aliens after their term of incarceration. >> host: are the vast majority illegal versus legal? >> guest: most of those are illegal. actually i misspoke earlier. the criminal alien is someone who is not a citizen of the country or national, that individual who has been arrested or convicted of a crime. >> host: so $2.5 billion, the cost of incarcerating criminal aliens. how do we come up with that

number? >> guest: when you look at the federal population that number has declined over time, so in 2010, 2011, 2010, that number was $1.56 billion and in 2015 that number was $1.42 billion at the federal level. at the state level the number in 2010-2011 was 1.17 and in 2015 that number decreased to 1.11. >> host: why does it seem according to these numbers to cost so much more to incarcerate criminal aliens on the federal level versus the state level? there are a lot more criminal aliens incarcerated on the state level but the costs are roughly equal. >> guest: what is interesting about our numbers at the state level is there is no database, no national set of data or statistics that will give you all the numbers of the state level. in order for us to look at numbers at the state level we use the state criminal alien

program, a federal program that will reimburse state and local jail for the cost of incarcerating criminal aliens. we are looking at correctional officer salaries, medical care, not every state participates in the scab program. the numbers at the state level do not represent the full cost at the state level. these are just the numbers we were able to have access to. >> host: we are talking about the cost of incarcerating criminal aliens with gretta goodwin, director of the homeland security and justice program, government counseling office, joining the conversation, 202-481-7001 independents 202-748-8002. we have plenty of gao officials on but if somebody if this is your first time being introduced to the government

accountability office, what is it? >> guest: government accountability office is part of the legislative branch. we are the investigative body of congress. we are at and investigate all federal programs. by that i mean if your agency is receiving money from any federal agencies, if you're into the is a serving money from any federal agencies we will on it or evaluate or investigate the purpose of what we are doing, to ensure federal money is being spent in the most efficient and effective way possible. >> host: is that happening when it comes to criminal alien incarceration? >> guest: it depends on how you look at it. when i talk about state information we don't have a complete picture of what that looks like and the reimbursement for the s.c.a.p. program are relatively low.

the first reason we don't have the picture is because not all states are participating. the second reason we don't have the whole picture is the reimbursement rates are pretty low. as it relates to the federal level we have a pretty good idea because those numbers tend to be pretty -- >> host: why did you do this report? >> guest: we were asked by three congresspersons, senator chuck grassley out of iowa, representative steve king and pete sessions out of texas to examine this information. gao has done this report a few times. are about every 5 to 7 years we will update the review. part of what we were doing this time is to update the review, to examine the change over time. when i talked about the federal population in our study, we were looking at 2011-2016. when i talk about the state population in our study we are

talking 2010-2015. those pickup from the last report. the last report we issued was in 2011. >> host: what happens to criminal aliens after they serve their time in us prisons? are they deported? >> guest: some of them can be but not all. that is the fourth objective in our report, when we look at what these offenses are after incarceration. some may be removable. some may be in immigration proceedings. if you are in immigration proceedings the likelihood you would be removed right away, you couldn't get a full sentence for that because of the way the immigration process works. >> host: do any go on to become us citizens? >> guest: yes. we looked at a small subset, 16 of the people in our population ended up being naturalized. >> host: 16 on how many? wikipedia >> guest: 60 not of 100,000. a very small percentage.

>> host: gretta goodwin taking your calls and questions. dale is up first in chesapeake beach, maryland, a republican. go ahead. >> caller: i wanted to make a couple quick comments. 2017 or during the election there was a lot of backlash about the border wall and how much it was going to cost and a waste of money, i heard $10-$20 billion. obviously a border wall wouldn't stop all illegal immigration, but if we are talking 3 to $4 billion a year costing our government, state, local and federal, to get these people through the justice system it sounds like that would pay for that wall over 5 to 10 years. on top of that a question about the study regarding what is criminal or not, isn't crossing the border illegal itself, a violation of the law? does that not get counted

whether someone is classified as a criminal illegal alien? >> host: start with the second question first. >> guest: crossing the border illegally is considered a crime. when we did our study we list the types of crimes they are incarcerated, one of the largest percentages of those, immigration. part of the immigration when we talk to immigration, illegal entry as part of that. >> host: the other question on the border wall. gao had an official estimate of what a border wall would cost. >> guest: we have ongoing work on that. we are working on that. >> host: who requested that and when will that come out? >> guest: i will have to get back to you on that one. i don't quite remember. >> host: laura in michigan, independent. good morning. >> caller: i see on the screen

it says $2.5 billion for immigrants incarceration. i wonder how much it costs the taxpayers for the president to fly tomorrow law go in the winter? i think it is $7 million every time he flies. that is an expense we could do without because he could stay in the white house that we prepare for our presidents. a small, 123 room building with full service. these poor people are being treated so shabbily. a friend of mine, a distant relative is among those people that are incarcerated, they were planning on coming up to michigan. they went through enormous trouble to get here, to get to texas. i think it is appalling how we

spend our money. people who go tomorrow law go to gulf war to bedminster. >> host: where are criminal aliens coming from? the nationalities of the folks that come the federal and state system? >> guest: absolutely. the majority of committal aliens are coming from mexico. the other countries at the federal level are honduras, guatemala, colombia. as it relates to the state it is similar. at the state level the majority is from mexico, also el salvador and germany. >> host: how do these folks end

up 3 incarcerated, come through the justice system several times whether it is after they are released and are deported? >> guest: in the part of the report that talks about arrests and convictions we are talking over appear go of time we estimate it has been over 1 million transfers, arrests and convictions and transfers. we put those two together because it is difficult to track. this is an issue with the database, how the data are collected and tracked. use arrest and transfer together so a transfer is from one law enforcement body to another. say you are arrested and you are arrested and move over -- in new york prisons and move over to border patrol. or if you are us marshals have you in custody and you moved to the border patrol, the transfer

from one agency to another. we use arrest and transfers together. we estimated 1.44 million times individuals have been arrested or transferred over the course of our review session. multiple times. >> host: janice is a republican, go ahead. >> caller: thank you. as a lay person who has a vague idea what is going on in the federal government or local governments, it appears to us that many of you studies are done and then our elected officials say i did something. what is done with this information that you gather? what benefit do i get from all the information the federal government gathers, and never does anything. >> host: answer the question.

>> guest: a part of what gao does is produce these reports and do these investigations to help congress make policy decisions. as it relates to this report we were asked to provide basic general information about the state of criminal aliens in the us and congress will take that and possibly make policy decisions or policy choices about it. what is really good and informative about this report is the information we provide at the state level. because there is no one database that pools this information together, the information we provide gives insight into what is happening at the state level and that is where most of the public is having these experiences with this population at the state level. >> host: at the end of the report like that is there a segment that says this is what you should do? >> guest: we will make recommendations, we provide

basic information so there are no recommendations in this report but again, one of the take aways is the numbers of decreased over time and in terms of the countries we talk about from the 2011 report the countries are pretty similar. additionally we are providing information about what is happening at the state level. it can be difficult to figure out. >> host: what is a report you worked on where you have given specific recommendations of what congress should do. >> guest: i work for gao. i in the homeland security in justice team. my particular portfolio covers justice and law enforcement issues. i work on issues related to the federal judiciary. i work on issues related to the federal firearms policy. i work on issues related to federal law enforcement. as well as vulnerable populations and justice issues. recently, i did report looking at human trafficking of native americans, whether that was

happening on native american soil or native americans across the country. one of the recommendations we made had to do with the data. the department of justice didn't have as much information whether human trafficking victims -- one of the recommendations we made to the department of justice was to do better tracking. >> host: cheryl in washington dc, democrat. >> caller: thank you for being on this morning representing the homeland security but it is very interesting that the data talking about aliens, this -- from texas, congresspeople who asked for it, supporting just what the president has been talking about. with you are a nonresident or a resident, the mentality we have for people who come into america has gotten to be very very disturbing to everyone. there's nothing wrong with the data, we need data but i placed

this call to ask the recommendations, if you take the data and put it back to congresspeople who ask for it, i am hoping the data would support the fact that we can do better in how we treat each other. >> host: anything you want to pick up on? >> guest: thank you for the call. as i mentioned earlier with this report we didn't make recommendations, providing basic information. what gao does is provide information so congress can make policy decisions that are in -- the best for this country. >> host: spring valley, california, go ahead. >> caller: my name is ernestine simmons and i was watching gretta goodwin, thank you for your service. i was wondering why you keep referring to immigrants as aliens. that sounds so inhumane, like they are from outer space somewhere.

i'm not comfortable with that terminology. any reason you keep saying illegal aliens? the other question is why focus on mexico when there are so many other borders immigrants come across like canada, honduras, even sweden and all these other places? >> host: take the question. >> guest: the reason we use the term alien in the immigration and naturalization act, that is how it is defined. i hear and understand the concern about referring to another human being is alien but when gao does the work we have to focus on what the statutes and laws are so it is in law that we refer to the individual as a criminal alien. that is the first question. the second question i have forgotten the second question. >> host: i apologize. the aliens outcome michelle is an mexican, a republican.

>> caller: i find this fascinating. $2.5 billion on incarceration? the first thing i would suggest is take all of the immigrants we have got here from, say, iran or one of those places and get 1 million of them, drop them in the middle of mexico and see how they like it. at that point they will do something about the border as well. we are not the only ones that have a problem. secondly this kind of money being spent for incarceration. why are we incarcerating them? why don't we send them back? spend thatzes me tosecondly amount of money to keep them in jail. guest: the first part of her previouss what the caller asked. it's ab now to a discussion on russia's influence on left-wing causes