A former illegal immigrant who now serves in Congress criticized President Donald Trump’s immigration policies Wednesday on grounds that they are too costly.

Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), whose family overstayed a tourist visa when he was a child and then returned to the Dominican Republic to obtain green cards, told CNN’s “New Day” that he worried about the price tag of hiring more immigration law enforcement officers and adding detention space.

“Do we have the money to implement all of this?”

“Do we have the money to implement all of this?” he asked. “Is this the best way to spend our money? Or should we be building schools? Should we be building, ah, infrastructure? Should we be doing positive things with this money?”

Fiscal conservatism is unfamiliar territory for normally free-spending Democrats, but critics of tough immigration enforcement are looking for any weapon they can find to slow or stop the president’s agenda.

Espaillat is not the first Democratic politician to suddenly find religion on government spending. Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-Calif.) raised the issue in January in response to Trump’s proposal to build a wall along the southwest border.

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“There’s no indication whatsoever that the moderate Republicans would go along with the cost of the wall,” he told The Hill.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) told CNN last month that the border wall was “monumentally stupid.”

Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) told Reuters this month that a border wall was a waste of money.

“Instead of funding this costly and ineffective proxy for real action on immigration reform, we should be directing our resources toward finding cures for cancer, building schools for our children, feeding the hungry and rebuilding our bridges and our roads,” he said.

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In a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, a group of liberal Democratic senators made the same argument.

“We are extraordinarily concerned that President Trump’s executive order appears to require that you divert DHS funds meant for critical security priorities to instead fund the border wall,” the letter states.

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Critics of the border wall and immigration enforcement generally almost never factor in savings from reduced illegal immigration. A study this month by the Center for Immigration Studies determined  that an even marginally successful border wall, for instance, would cost less than the long-term savings to taxpayers at all levels of government. That is because the illegal immigrants most likely to be stopped by a wall are disproportionately low-education, low-skill immigrants whose lifetime fiscal impact on government greatly exceeds what they pay in taxes.

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) hinted at the irony on Wednesday during an appearance on CNN.

“I haven’t changed my mind about being fiscally conservative, and I appreciate the assumption,” he said. “It turns out, this time it was correct. But the reality … is that we have to measure all the costs, ancillary and otherwise, and make the best decision that we can.”