The nation’s illegal alien population has hit nearly 17 million, an increase of more than two million since President Joe Biden began implementing his Catch and Release network at the United States–Mexico border, an analysis reveals.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) released its annual report estimating the size of the illegal alien population residing in the United States.

Based on the latest Census Bureau data, FAIR researchers found that there are at least 16.8 million illegal aliens now living in American communities — an increase of 2.3 million illegal aliens since Biden took office in January 2021 and an increase of 1.3 million illegal aliens since the same time last year.

Chart via Federation for American Immigration Reform

As the illegal alien population skyrockets under Biden, so do the costs to Americans.

“Along with the sharp increase in the illegal alien population comes [sic] sharp increases in costs to American taxpayers,” researchers note:

The unprecedented rate of influx of new illegal aliens over the past year would add $12.6 billion annually to the costs of illegal immigration, bringing the cumulative net cost to at least $163 billion a year. At the current pace of illegal immigration, the annual net cost will exceed $200 billion by 2026. [Emphasis added]

“… [T]he fiscal and social burdens of the Biden administration’s sabotage of our immigration enforcement policies are unsustainable,” FAIR President Dan Stein said in a statement.

Chart via Federation for American Immigration Reform

Researchers also state that at the current pace of illegal immigration, more illegal aliens will have resettled across the U.S. in Biden’s first three years in office than in the entire decade of the 2010s.

“The impact of these policies is causing social upheaval, setting states against other states, big cities against surrounding communities, overwhelming school districts and social service providers, as economic migrants from all across the globe pour across our borders,” Stein said.

Indeed, recent analysis has shown the impact that illegal immigration has on American public schools and hospital systems.

The House Homeland Security Committee detailed how illegal aliens are driving up costs for hospitals with billions in unpaid medical bills that American taxpayers are then forced to subsidize.

Likewise, the Center for Immigration Studies published research this week which reveals that mass immigration has tripled the number of public school students from immigrant-headed households in the U.S. since 1980 and, as a result, “added disproportionately to the number of low-income students in public schools.”

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John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here