The government's efforts to audit Social Security and end birthright citizenship have been met with resistance from Democrats, who claim that illegal aliens do not receive government benefits. However, this claim is false.
Audit efforts, such as those led by DOGE, aim to cut waste and remove individuals receiving benefits illegally. Liberals have protested these efforts, labeling them as a plot to harm widows and disabled people. However, the reality is that Social Security money is being spent on purposes other than funding retirement benefits, and illegals receive state and federal benefits, including Social Security, through several mechanisms.
Since 1935, Social Security surplus revenue has been invested in special-issue Treasury securities, which can be used to finance other government spending. In 2025 alone, these investments earned $69 billion at an effective rate of 2.6 percent. The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance trust funds are legally separate accounts, but together they held $2.56 trillion in Treasury securities at the end of 2025, representing 88 years of accumulated payroll tax surpluses and credited interest.
The main driver of the growing gap between benefit payments and income is demographic: the ratio of workers paying in to beneficiaries drawing out has fallen from over 5-to-1 in 1960 to roughly 2.7-to-1 today. Annual cost-of-living adjustments continue raising the dollar amount owed to existing beneficiaries, further exacerbating the gap.
The original Social Security Act paid benefits only to workers who had contributed, but subsequent amendments have expanded eligibility to include spouses, minor children, and survivors. In 1966, Lyndon Johnson signed the Tax Adjustment Act, creating Special Age 72 benefits for people aged 72 or older who had never qualified through work. These benefits were funded entirely by general revenue.
However, there are several documented channels through which illegal aliens access Social Security and SSI funds. Under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, U.S. citizen children in mixed-status households remain eligible for certain benefits regardless of a parent's status. Additionally, SSA's Office of Inspector General has an active caseload of individuals who used stolen or borrowed Social Security numbers to file for and receive benefits outright.
Examples of high-profile cases include a Dominican national who used a stolen identity to obtain over $105,000 in Title II disability benefits, a Colombian national who lived under a stolen identity for over two decades and took more than $400,000 in federal benefits, and an unauthorized immigrant who used a deceased American's Social Security number to obtain benefits for 18 years.
SSA's own fraud-allegation data shows that false personation and SSN misuse accounted for roughly half of all reported allegations in fiscal year 2024, with SSI making up 9.9 percent of that total. The 2004 Social Security Protection Act requires that an alien whose Social Security number was assigned on or after January 1, 2004, have had work authorization at some point to gain insured status.
In April 2025, President Trump signed a memorandum directing federal agencies to prevent illegal aliens from obtaining Social Security Act benefits, citing more than 2 million Social Security numbers assigned to noncitizens in fiscal year 2024. The Department of Homeland Security has since subpoenaed Los Angeles County records to determine whether ineligible illegal aliens received SSI, and the investigation remains open.
