Convicted felon, former president, and presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump falsely suggested twice during last night's presidential debate that undocumented immigrants are illegally receiving benefits through Social Security and Medicare, and undermining the financial stability of the programs. In fact, undocumented immigrants are ineligible for most federal benefit programs, and they actually contribute to Social Security and Medicare through payroll taxes.
Trump repeated the false claim twice last night, and it echoed one he has been telling since at least the 2020 campaign. The false claim seems to be based on Trump’s misunderstanding of a Fox News report in 2019 about then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s response to a question about healthcare policy. Both PolitiFact and Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler dismantled Trump's argument in September 2020, which falsely claimed “Biden's promising your benefits to illegal immigrants” in reference to Medicare and Social Security. From The Washington Post:
The suggestion that some other worker, let alone illegal immigrants, can receive “your benefits” is simply wrong. Your benefits are established under the law, depending how long you have worked and for how much. Maybe the ad means “the same benefits,” but as phrased it is misleading.
Biden has called for a path for citizenship for some 11 million undocumented immigrants — a standard position for a Democrat. If these people ever become citizens, they too would be eligible to earn Social Security benefits.
Undocumented workers currently are not eligible for Social Security. Yet with few exceptions, workers in the United States must pay a portion of their earnings to Social Security, which is matched by their employer. Thus workers in the country illegally who have fraudulent or unauthorized Social Security numbers are paying into the system but do not get any benefits.
In response to last night's debate, New York Times correspondent Jim Tankersley again fact-checked Trump’s false claim and reiterated that undocumented workers are not eligible to receive Social Security benefits even though they pay into the system:
Mr. Trump has this backward. Undocumented workers often pay taxes that help fund Social Security. But, as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office once noted, “most unauthorized immigrants are prohibited from receiving many of the benefits that the federal government provides through Social Security and such need-based programs as food stamps, Medicaid (other than emergency services) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.”
Undocumented immigrants are not eligible to receive most federal benefit programs, including those for healthcare and retirement. President Biden never said that he supported making undocumented immigrants eligible to receive Social Security (or Medicare and Medicaid) and he has actually outlined a plan to extend the solvency of the vital retirement program by increasing the payroll tax threshold so more money from high-income earners will be paid into the system.
Trump, meanwhile, has floated cutting Social Security and restricting other entitlement benefits if he returns to the Oval Office. As president, Trump repeatedly included cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his budget proposals. Trump has no shortage of right-wing allies, like Project 2025 organizer The Heritage Foundation, that are eager to join his effort to gut American retirement programs.