Trump officials investigate state aid program for people who legally migrated to US

The Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says it is opening an investigation into a state-funded California program that provides financial assistance to some people who legally migrated to the US as the White House continues pursuing a crackdown on immigration.

For years, California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI) has provided monthly cash assistance to elderly, blind and disabled immigrants with legal status, a much-needed lifeline for vulnerable permanent residents, refugees, people granted asylum and others. Yet, in announcing its investigation Monday into the program, DHS accused the program of “providing federal benefits” to undocumented immigrants, echoing unproven claims circulating among the US’s political rightwing.

A DHS statement said Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) had subpoenaed the Los Angeles county Department of Public Social Services, which runs the CAPI program. HSI, an agency within the US’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), is purportedly examining whether undocumented immigrants received federal supplemental security income (SSI) from the Social Security Administration beginning in January 2021, at the start of Joe Biden’s presidency, the statement said.

However, California state officials have long maintained that their CAPI program is entirely state-funded, providing services to elderly, blind or disabled immigrants with legal status, including permanent residents. Additionally, immigrants in California who receive cash from the CAPI program are required to have been rejected from receiving SSI assistance in the first place.

Kristi Noem, the DHS secretary, nonetheless, exalted the investigation as “just the beginning”, saying it hews to an executive order from Trump in April that instructed various federal agencies to “ensure ineligible [immigrants] are not receiving funds from Social Security Act programs”.

Trump and his allies have continued to push the lie that undocumented immigrants receive social security benefits. In fact, undocumented immigrants do pay taxes, but they do not receive any social security benefits in return.

Some undocumented immigrants, who have received permission to work while going through their legal proceedings, are eligible to receive social security numbers. They are required to pay taxes and pay into the program. However, they are ineligible to receive any social security benefits.

Nonetheless, a 2024 social media post from Trump falsely said that the Democrats “killed” social security by “allowing the INVASION OF THE MIGRANTS”. Among those to promote that lie is the multibillionaire Trump supporter Elon Musk, a native of South Africa who reportedly at one point worked illegally in the US briefly after abandoning a graduate studies program in California.

Noem pushed a similar falsehood in Monday’s DHS statement.

“Radical left politicians in California prioritize illegal aliens over our own citizens, including by giving illegal aliens access to cash benefits,” Noem said. “The Trump administration is working together to identify abuse and exploitation of public benefits and make sure those in this country illegally are not receiving federal benefits or other financial incentives to stay illegally.”

The Trump administration has tried to cut federal funding to so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that are seen as resisting the president’s agenda to carry out deportations en masse. A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from cutting off the funding, in a battle that is now playing out in the courts.