Tallahassee Gov. Ron DeSantis sent dozens of Florida law-enforcement officers and equipment to the southern border in Texas ;ast summer and racked up a taxpayer-funded bill that so far amounts to at least $1.6 million but is expected to keep growing.

The seven-week trip, led by three state agencies, was cast by the Republican governor as a needed measure to beef up security at the border amid the failures of President Joe Biden’s administration, while critics saw the effort as a state-funded political errand used to further DeSantis’ national footprint ahead of a potential 2024 White House bid.

The Miami Herald reported in November that the trip had cost taxpayers $570,988, but additional records released to the First Amendment Foundation and obtained by the Miami Herald show the cost was at least $1.6 million, a number that is expected to grow.

The governor’s office did not correct the record when the Herald first asked about and later reported the $570,988 figure on Nov. 10, despite the cost of the mission being nearly triple that amount.

Instead, the governor’s office told the Herald at the time that “the cost of illegal immigration to Floridians are thousands of times more than $570,000.”

In reality, the $570,988 figure was only representative of the amount spent by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, not the full cost of the mission. FDLE provided that figure to the Herald on Nov. 10, but records show the agency spent $20,000 more than what was initially disclosed.

When asked about the ballooning figures, the governor’s office and FDLE defended the cost and sidestepped questions about the incomplete disclosures.

“The cost of responding to the request for emergency assistance from Texas still pales in comparison to the enormous price Floridians pay for the Biden administration’s failure to secure the border and enforce our country’s immigration laws,” DeSantis’ spokeswoman, Christina Pushaw, said in a statement Tuesday morning.

While in Texas, the Florida officers made contact with 9,171 undocumented immigrants, Pushaw said. Just over 3% of those contacts resulted in a criminal arrest, according to data provided by Pushaw on Nov. 10.

FDLE spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said the lower figure provided to the Herald reflected numbers that were “pulled in September and were accurate at the time.” The mission ended on Aug. 14.

“This is exactly the point of our public records law, to allow taxpayers and people who live in Florida to know how their dollars are being used, and what the government is doing with the dollars we give them,” said Pamela C. Marsh, the executive director of the First Amendment Foundation, which made the request for records detailing the costs of the mission.

The records outline a broad breakdown of how much was spent by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Florida Highway Patrol on supplies, travel, equipment, salaries, overtime pay, some fuel costs and other undisclosed expenses.

Missing from the records is how much the Florida Highway Patrol spent on fuel, a likely substantial cost because 114 troopers drove their vehicles to Del Rio, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border.

“What was explained to me was that they would need to figure out who was driving which car, when and then how much gas was put into each of those cars,” said Bob Shaw, a First Amendment Foundation board member who was told records detailing fuel costs from the agency would need to be collected separately.

FWC spent $618,086, the most out of the three agencies. So far, FDLE has racked up a $591,848 bill. FHP has spent $467,865.