WASHINGTON — President Trump said Thursday that 275,000 illegal immigrants have been purged from the Social Security rolls on his watch.
“To protect our benefits, we’ve already kicked nearly 275,000 illegal aliens off of the Social Security system,” Trump said in the Oval Office with Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano looking on.
Bisignano, the former COO of JP Morgan Chase and ex-CEO of financial technology giant Fiserv, did not comment on the president’s claim, which Trump appeared to read off a prepared list of agency accomplishments to mark the 90th anniversary of then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act into law.
The Social Security Administration confirmed in a statement that it “updated the Social Security records of about 275,000 individuals no longer holding legal status,” without offering details.
“These are people, many of them have already left the country, and yet we were sending them checks all the time,” Trump said Thursday.
“Biden never kicked anybody off,” the president later added. “Everybody joined. And we’re carrying out historic deportations to remove many more illegals committing Social Security fraud. It’s a Social Security fraud that was taking place at levels that nobody’s ever seen.”
Illegal immigrants can pay into Social Security or receive benefits through various fraudulent means and it was not immediately clear whether all 275,000 were actually receiving money as opposed to paying into the system via the use of a stolen Social Security number to gain employment.
Trump touted various changes to the social safety net, including the fact that seniors will now receive a $6,000 tax deduction via his recently enacted “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
The new deduction means that 88% of seniors will no longer pay taxes on their benefits, according to the White House, fulfilling one of Trump’s key campaign pledges.
Trump also claimed Thursday that Social Security field office wait times are down 30% from this time last year, call wait times are down 73% and that the disability claims backlog is down 26%.
