The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has subpoenaed records from a state agency in California to determine whether illegal aliens enrolled in a wasteful welfare program are also receiving Social Security benefits.
The Title 8 subpoena seeks records from the state’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants.
The action follows President Trump’s executive order of April 15 to stop illegals from receiving Social Security benefits. Trump’s order, in turn, came on the heels of reports that 2 million illegals were enrolled in Social Security in 2024, and that terrorists and other criminal illegals paroled at the border received Medicaid and other benefits.
Scandal Surfaces, Trump’s Order
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) revealed the gargantuan Social Security fraud in March at a town hall in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Speaking at the event were DOGE chief Elon Musk and DOGEr Antonio Gracias, CEO of Valor Equity Partners.
The two men revealed that the number of illegals on Social Security grew some 678 percent from under 300,000 to more than 2 million from 2021 to 2024. Worse still, many of those illegals unlawfully voted.
DOGE mapped the entire Social Security system, Gracias said, and when the DOGE detectives looked for fraud, they noticed something unusual.
“We’re, like, what is this?” Gracias said, pointing a bar chart:
In [20]21 you see 270,000 people [and] goes all the way to 2.1 million in [20]24 These are noncitizens that are getting Social Security numbers.… This literally blew us away.… We went there to find fraud and we found this by accident.
But that wasn’t all.
Gracias revealed that 1.3 million illegals were enrolled in Medicaid, the federal healthcare program for the poor. “On every benefit program we went through,” he said, DOGErs “found 5.5 million people enrolled.”
As well, they voted, Gracias continued:
And then what was really really disturbing us was why we’re asking ourselves why? And so we actually just took a sample and looked at voter registration records and we found people here registered to vote.
“And who did vote,” Musk added.
Worse still, the Biden administration released into the country more than 6,000 criminals and/or terrorists who tried to jump the border.
A White House official spoke to the Daily Caller, revealing that U.S. Customs and Border Protection fingered 6,300 paroled illegals since 2023 who “are on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center or have a criminal record.”
Of those 6,300, 905, including four on the terror watch list, collected $276,000 from Medicaid, the website explained. All had Social Security numbers, and 41 received $42,000 in unemployment benefits. Another 22 received $280,000 in federal student loans.
On X, DOGE noted that 409 illegals received $751,000 in net tax refunds. Several collected food stamps. As well, 41 criminals and/or terrorists received employment benefits, the Labor Department revealed.
So the Biden administration helped illegal-alien criminals and terrorists to rob American taxpayers.
Subpoena Time
Day after those reports, Trump delivered “Preventing Illegal Aliens from Obtaining Social Security Act Benefits.”
The “principles of sound administration demand that taxpayer-funded benefits be provided only to eligible persons and not encourage or reward illegal immigration to the United States,” the president wrote:
This interest is especially compelling with respect to Social Security Act benefits, which demand strict policing of fraud, waste, and abuse to ensure future eligible individuals receive the benefits to which they are entitled.
So now, DHS will use a Title 8 subpoena, which seeks information or records for an immigration investigation, to find out if the illegal aliens who receive benefits from California’s free money program for illegals also receive Social Security benefits.
The program, its website says, “is a 100 percent state-funded program designed to provide monthly cash benefits to aged, blind, and disabled non-citizens who are ineligible for Supplemental Security Income/State Supplementary Payment (SSI/SSP) solely due to their immigration status.”
The subpoena “requests all records from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services — who administers the state program — to determine if ineligible illegal aliens received Supplemental Security Income (SSI) from the Social Security Administration, between January 2021 to present,” DHS said.
The subpoena from Homeland Security Investigations seeks the following information:
- Applicant’s Name and Date of Birth
- Copies of Applications
- Immigration Status
- Proof of Ineligibility for SSI from the Social Security Administration
- Affidavits in Support of the Application
The goal, apparently, is to cross-check the names of illegals enrolled in California’s program against the names of Social Security recipients. The subpoena might not only catch run-of-the-mill illegal-alien Social Security fraudsters, but also more illegal-alien criminals and/or terrorists in the retirement program.
The Gravy Train Is Over
“Radical left politicians in California prioritize illegal aliens over our own citizens, including by giving illegal aliens access to cash benefits,” DHS chief Kristi Noem said:
The Trump Administration is working together to identify abuse and exploitation of public benefits and make sure those in this country illegally are not receiving federal benefits or other financial incentives to stay illegally. If you are an illegal immigrant, you should leave now. The gravy train is over. While this subpoena focuses only on Los Angeles County — it is just the beginning.
Very likely, the state will file a federal lawsuit to stop the administration from obtaining the records.
The cash benefits program website notes that the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 forbids illegals from enrolling in public benefits programs. Unhappily, the law permitted states to continue subsidizing illegals.
