What Percent Of U.S. Households Headed By Illegal Immigrants Receive Welfare Benefits?

As you are probably aware, in most circumstances and for most categories of handouts, illegal immigrants in the United States do not qualify for welfare benefits.  As I’m using it here, the term “welfare” does not include Social Security or Medicare, which are not restricted by income status; but the term “welfare” does include all of the large number of what are called “means-tested” programs, which in the aggregate consume nearly $1 trillion annually of federal spending (and well over $1 trillion if state contributions are included).  The biggest of the “means tested” programs are Medicaid, SNAP (“food stamps”), and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, otherwise known as classic welfare); and there are dozens more.  Illegal immigrants are specifically excluded from participating in those three big federal welfare programs, and from most (but not all) of the others.

And yet there was the New York Times, in its Sunday (May 31) print edition, with a lead front page headline that may set a new record (if that is possible) for anti-Trump spin:  “Trump Cuts Off Life Necessities for Immigrants.”  When I saw that, my first reaction was, how can Trump “cut off” illegal immigrants from government benefits (whether or not the benefits are “life necessities”) when they are not eligible for those benefits in the first place?

The Times article (here is a link to an online version with a somewhat different headline) is a typical advocacy piece designed to defend every government benefit and every penny of government spending toward the project of creating perfect fairness and justice on earth at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer.  To be fair, its discussion of “life necessities” includes not only welfare benefits, but also work authorization.  But before getting into the Times piece in more detail, how about answering the question of whether there actually are large numbers of illegal immigrants currently receiving benefits from one or more government means-tested welfare programs?  

The Times article does not answer that question.  Looking around for the answer, I find a paper dated February 4, 2026 from the Center for Immigration Studies with the title “Welfare Use by Immigrants and the U.S.-Born, 2024.”  The paper analyzes 2024 (most recent available) data from the Census Bureau from something called their “2024 Survey of Income and Program Participation.”  And the answer is:  The percentage of illegal-immigrant-headed households in the U.S. using one or more means-tested welfare programs is (drumroll !!!) — 61%.  In other words, it’s actually a substantial majority of all the households headed by illegal immigrants.