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The White House is ramping up efforts to remove illegal immigrants from an array of taxpayer-funded benefits, framing the move as part of a broader campaign to reduce government waste.
The Trump administration shared additional details on the new restrictions that would bar illegal immigrants from accessing more than 15 federal assistance programs, which collectively account for $40 billion in public spending.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Fox News Digital that illegal immigrants will no longer be able “to steal public benefits at the expense of hardworking American taxpayers.”
“That ends now. Under President Trump, it’s America first always,” Rogers said.
The lion’s share of the programs being put off-limits to undocumented immigrants are overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, while others fall under the Departments of Education, Agriculture, Labor, and Justice.
The White House said that several government health services – including Head Start, substance abuse prevention and treatment programs, family planning benefits, and health workforce loans and scholarships – will be inaccessible to illegal immigrants.
The move aligns with President Donald Trump’s dual campaign promise of stricter immigration enforcement and elimination of wasteful government spending.
The latest revelation comes on the heels of the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Trump’s hallmark spending and tax bill. Medicaid, the insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans, proved to be a sticking point in both the House and Senate.
As the bill inched across the finish line, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt downplayed claims that the measure would strip vulnerable Americans of their healthcare.
“This bill protects Medicaid… for those who truly deserve this program, the needy, pregnant women, children and sick Americans who physically cannot work. It ensures that able-bodied Americans who can work 20 hours a week are actually doing so, and that will therefore strengthen and protect those benefits for Americans who need it,” Leavitt told reporters during a White House briefing last month.
Leavitt added that the measure will address “waste, fraud and abuse” and remove approximately 1.4 million illegal immigrants from the program.
“It is perfectly reasonable for taxpayers who are paying into the Medicaid program to insist that everyone in the program who can contribute do so, by working,” Michael Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, previously told FOX Business.
The bill asks Medicaid members who are able-bodied, prime-age adults without children to work or volunteer roughly 20 hours a week.
Nina Schaefer, the director of the Center for Health and Welfare Policy at the Heritage Foundation, described the Medicaid provisions as “common sense administrative changes.”
“The Medicaid program is over 60 years old and has been running on autopilot for far too long. These changes begin to bring much needed oversight, transparency, and accountability to the program,” Schaefer said.
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