AUSTIN, Texas – Texas Gov. Rick Perry has asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for nearly $350 million to cover the costs incurred detaining illegal immigrants in state prisons and county jails.

In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Perry criticized the federal government for not doing enough to secure the border with Mexico, thereby allowing illegal immigrants to enter the U.S. and use taxpayer-funded resources, including prisons and jails. It’s a claim the Republican governor has made many times before.

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Texas Gov. Rick Perry says the federal government has not done enough to secure the U.S. border with Mexico. 2011 Associated Press file

The letter was dated Aug. 10, three days before Perry formally announced he is running for president.

Reached after-hours Friday by phone, DHS spokesman Matthew Chandler said he wasn’t in a position to comment and said he could not confirm that the DHS had even received the letter.

Perry has been criticized by some fellow conservatives as being too lenient on illegal immigration issues. Unlike fellow GOP presidential hopeful Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Perry does not think the U.S. should build a wall spanning the entire Mexican border.

Perry also has supported discounted tuition rates for the children of illegal immigrants at Texas universities, and he has said that Arizona’s tough-on-immigration law wouldn’t be right for Texas.

In his two-page letter to Napolitano, Perry described the formula he used to determine the costs, including $94.4 million to cover the costs incurred by county jails.

“During tough economic times, when communities are making difficult decisions about their own budgets, Texas counties are being asked to cover more than $94.4 million in direct costs related to housing illegal immigrants while the state has been left to cover more than $254.8 million in such costs.”

He included a memo from state Comptroller Susan Combs in which she supports his calculations but warns that the estimates are conservative.

“The longstanding failure of the federal government to secure our border with Mexico continues to burden local communities and resources in Texas,” Perry wrote. “Because there are not enough troops on the ground, illegal immigrants are able to penetrate the Texas border every day and use taxpayer-funded resources.”

As governor, Perry was one of the first to talk about immigration by breaking out the issue of border security, a move that has won him support from conservative Hispanics.

But he angered Hispanic leaders in June by endorsing legislation that would have prohibited cities from adopting “sanctuary” rules for handling suspected immigrants.

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