The state of Texas got brutally exposed on social media as part of a long-running viral thread that led one conservative to bring the receipts and note that illegal immigrants had received over $25 million in Medicaid benefits in the state in one month alone, with a total of over $120 million in overall medical services provided to illegal immigrants.
For background, in a heated dispute on X that started on July 9, 2025, with controversial statements from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a conservative stepped in and presented records showing that illegal immigrants are receiving Medicaid benefits after a leftist said that this was impossible.
The thread began with a July 9 post from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who said that undocumented immigrants “are skipping life-saving care out of fear of ICE, with no-shows doubling in some L.A. hospitals.” She added, “I worked in the Emergency Room — I know firsthand how dangerous this is. This assault on our city must end.”
In response to Mayor Bass’s post, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called her out for missing the facts, saying, “A primary driver of healthcare costs in America is the free or subsidized healthcare provided to illegal aliens and their families.” Conservative influencer Gunther Eagleman chimed in, “Illegal aliens should get ZERO benefits from the government.”
However, liberal political commentator Brian Taylor Coen disputed Miller’s post, writing, “Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid or Medicare. But don’t let reality get in the way of spoon feeding bile to the rubes who listen to you.” Coen was immediately criticized in the comments section, with the X user Tom Elliott writing, “14 states explicitly offer Medicaid to illegal immigrants. Do you ever write anything that isn’t a lie?”
Next, an X user with the handle “Tired of being politically incorrect” wrecked Mayor Bass and Coen with a screenshot of an April 25, 2025, report from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission that showed that Texas hospitals “incurred $121.8 million in health care costs for persons not lawfully present in the U.S.” in November 2024 alone, with over $25 million attributed to Medicaid.
Moreover, the statement shared in the X post, which was written by HHS staffer Jennifer Ruffcorn, stated, “Individuals not lawfully present in the U.S. visited Texas hospitals more than 31,000 times within that month, according to the data.” The statement continued, “Hospitals throughout the state reported the data to the HHSC in accordance with Governor Greg Abbott’s Executive Order 46.”
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Importantly, Executive Order 46, signed by Gov. Abbott on August 8, 2024, directs healthcare facilities to share information with the Texas Health and Human Services Commission “to assess costs to the Texas public hospital system imposed by the federal government’s open-border policies.” As noted by Ruffcorn, HHS is slated to release an annual report on its data on January 1, 2026.
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