Speaking during an event celebrating the 90th anniversary of then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act into law, President Donald Trump announced that, under his watch, a massive 275,000 illegal immigrants have been purged from the Social Security rolls, helping protect the program from fraud and cost overruns.
As background, the Department of Government Efficiency made protecting Social Security by tackling the fraud problem a major initiative, particularly the problem of foreign fraudsters and long-dead individuals remaining on the rolls and draining it of much-needed resources.
The fraud problem is one the government needs to tackle, as that would prolong the trust fund that is set to run out in the early 2030s. Under current American law, according to the Social Security Administration, only “lawfully present noncitizens of the United States who meet all eligibility requirements can qualify for Social Security benefits.”
So, speaking about the matter of illegal aliens being kicked off as Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano, the former COO of JP Morgan Chase and ex-CEO of financial technology giant Fiserv, looked on without commenting, the president announced that hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens have been purged from the rolls.
Beginning his comments in the Oval Office-based press event about Social Security, the president said, “We’ve already kicked nearly 275,000 illegal aliens off of the Social Security system.” Continuing, the president added, “These are people, many of them have already left the country, and yet we were sending them checks all the time.”
Continuing, President Trump commented on the fact that tens of millions of Americans, perhaps 60 million people, rely on Social Security’s regular payments to retirees. He then used that to note the importance of the dire state of Social Security under Biden, saying, “Under Biden, Social Security went down like nobody’s ever seen. It deteriorated.”
And, commenting on the removal of over 12 million individuals aged 120 or older from the Social Security Administration’s system, the president joked that they must have set world records by living so far, as some were “over 120 years of age, meaning you were breaking records, because I’ve never heard of anybody at 125.” He added, “There were nearly 135,000 people listed who are over 160 years old, and in some cases, getting payments.”
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The Social Security Administration, for its part, backed up the president in comments to The Daily Mail, saying, “Under President Trump’s leadership, SSA updated the Social Security records of about 275,000 individuals no longer holding legal status, ensuring people ineligible to receive benefits are not improperly paid.”
Bisignano, for his part, shared how the SSA has made moves to digitize and modernize itself, saying, “This will be a digital-first agency, and we are building MySSA accounts, that’s the digital account, and we have a bold goal of 200 million Americans to have a digital SSA account by the end of next year.” He added, It will happen, just like we had a bold goal of single-digit wait time on the calls when they were at 40 minutes.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video