The Big Immigration Lie
A News Link Round-Up
A weekly round-up of links on immigration, the lawlessness of mass deportations, officially sanctioned tolerance of racism, state-level constitutionalism, the Trump economy, the dysfunction of our royal court, and the AI bubble.
The Big Immigration Lie
Immigrant and Native Consumption of Means-Tested Welfare and Entitlement Benefits in 2023
Differences in welfare consumption by immigration status largely reflect life-cycle effects, as immigrants arrive younger, age into entitlement programs later, and often naturalize only after many years in the United States. Overall, immigrants consumed about 24 percent less welfare and entitlement benefits than native-born Americans. All immigrants were 14.8 percent of the US population and consumed just 10.4 percent of all estimated benefits in 2023; noncitizens were 7.5 percent of the population and consumed 3.2 percent of all benefits; and naturalized immigrants were 7.2 percent of the population and consumed 8 percent of all benefits. Native-born Americans consumed more than $3 trillion in means-tested welfare and entitlement benefits in 2023, compared with $401.6 billion consumed by all immigrants, $125.2 billion consumed by noncitizens, and $310.1 billion consumed by naturalized immigrants. If native-born Americans had consumed the same per capita dollar amount of means-tested welfare and entitlement programs as all immigrants, the total expenditures on these programs would have been about $715 billion less in 2023.
Immigrants Use Less Welfare at Every Income Level
An astute reader of our recent Cato policy brief on immigrant welfare use suggested stratifying our data by income since many welfare programs are intended to help the poor. Doing so would be a return to how we used to report immigrant welfare use in the olden days. We do that below and find that immigrants consistently report lower welfare use for nearly every program, regardless of poverty or income….
Whatever one’s views on immigration policy, the claim that immigrants systematically consume more welfare than native-born Americans isn’t supported in the data.
For example, while Mr. Trump and his aides often talk about immigration officials targeting murderers, rapists and gangsters, the internal data indicate that less than 2% of those arrested by ICE over the past year had homicide or sexual assault charges or convictions. Another 2% of those taken into ICE custody were accused of being gang members.
Nearly 40% of all of those arrested by ICE in Mr. Trump’s first year back in office did not have any criminal record at all, and were only accused of civil immigration offenses, such as living in the U.S. illegally or overstaying their permission to be in the country, the DHS document shows. Those alleged violations of U.S. immigration law are typically adjudicated by Justice Department immigration judges in civil—not criminal—proceedings.
“Absolute Hell”
“Absolute Hell”: Irishman with Valid US Work Permit Held by Ice Since September
Originally from Glenmore, Co Kilkenny, Seamus Culleton is married to a US citizen and owns a plastering business in the Boston area. He was arrested on September 9th, 2025, and has been in an Ice detention facility in Texas for nearly five months, despite having no criminal record, “not even a parking ticket”. In a phone interview from the facility, he said conditions there are “like a concentration camp, absolute hell”.
Culleton said he was carrying a Massachusetts driving license and a valid work permit issued by the US government when he was pulled over by Ice on the way home from work in September.
