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Fact Check
The world’s richest man made inaccurate claims about entitlement fraud, how a government payment system works and government survey costs.
- March 28, 2025Updated 1:05 p.m. ET
Elon Musk, the billionaire leading a government efficiency initiative, has for weeks made broad and unsupported claims of rampant fraud in federal spending.
In a series of interviews on conservative podcasts and television interviews, Mr. Musk has defended attempts by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to target popular entitlement programs like Social Security and access sensitive payment systems with a series of inaccurate claims. A representative for DOGE did not respond when asked for evidence of Mr. Musk’s claims.
Here’s a fact-check.
WHAT WAS SAID
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This lacks evidence. Unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for most federal safety net benefits, and there is no evidence to suggest they are committing fraud en masse to obtain them. In fact, a number of independent and government analyses suggest that the opposite is true: Unauthorized immigrants pay more into Social Security and Medicare than they receive in federal benefits.
Federal law bars unauthorized immigrants from receiving Social Security or Medicare benefits, as well as most other federal government assistance programs, but they do pay taxes. (Immigrants, including those who those received asylum, refugee or humanitarian parole status, may be eligible for more programs.)
In a 2013 report, the Social Security Administration estimated that 3.1 million unauthorized immigrants were working and paying Social Security taxes, contributing about $12 billion to the trust in 2010 and about $100 billion over a decade. A 2016 study estimated that unauthorized immigrants contributed about $35.1 billion to Medicare from 2000 to 2011.
