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Stephen Miller: ‘People Who Don’t Belong Here’ Are Responsible For National Debt

Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller said on Monday that “people who don’t belong here” are responsible for the United States’ growing national debt.

During an executive order signing to address supposed fraud within federal programs, Miller attributed the debt to undocumented immigrants who received Medicaid benefits and emergency care at hospitals.

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“What we found since President Trump came into office is that the Democrats have set up the system to funnel hundreds of billions, and ultimately trillions of dollars, to migrants,” Miller said.

He claimed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had asked a group of detained migrants whether or not they were on Medicaid, and “half of them raised their hands and volunteered that they were on Medicaid.”

Miller added that the undocumented immigrants in that group who said they didn’t receive Medicaid benefits still went to hospitals because “they get free care there, and they bill it to the taxpayers.”

“I believe, and I know President Trump believes, that when this theft is exposed, we will see that if all of it were stopped, it would be enough to balance the budget,” Miller said. “The extraction of wealth from American taxpayers to people who don’t belong here is the primary cause of the national debt.”

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Miller, who many experts and pundits have credited with shaping President Donald Trump’s immigration policy, did not provide any evidence other than that one anecdote to support his claims.

However, a study by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, found that between 1994 and 2023, immigrants — both legal and undocumented — paid more in taxes each year than they received in benefits. The study also found that if the federal government had not spent a single dollar on immigrants and yet collected all their tax income, it would have run a $20 trillion deficit over that period. The researchers noted that “immigrants are not to blame for government deficits. Indeed, they reduced the deficit by about $14.5 trillion.”

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Undocumented immigrants are ineligible under federal law to receive benefits, such as SNAP, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, despite paying into those entitlements. And federal law requires Medicare-participating hospitals with emergency departments to provide emergency care to individuals, regardless of immigration status, healthcare coverage or ability to pay.

An analysis conducted by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which was established by theformer U.S. secretary of commerce in the Nixon administration, said that the rise in the national debt over the last 25 years was in large part due to an aging population receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits, and interest payments on the debt itself.

Other major spikes in the national debt occurred during the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, the Great Recession of 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.