Immigrants without US citizenship represent less than 5% of losses due to fraud to social programs in the United States, the Cato Institute revealed amid controversy over the Donald Trump Administration’s investigation of the Somali community in Minnesota.
The research center, affiliated with the libertarian right, stated in a report that US citizens are responsible for 95% of the $5.5 billion in losses due to fraud in social programs from 2013 to 2024, while non-citizens represented 4.6%, with the rest unidentified.
Additionally, immigrants defrauded 31% less than U.S. citizens, the report added, based on data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
“Benefit fraud is not a compelling justification for broad restrictions on immigration. The primary economic benefit of immigration to Americans is the goods and services they produce,” wrote report author David J. Bier.
The document recalled the current controversy over million-dollar fraud related to child care programs linked to the Somali community in Minnesota, which motivated President Trump to deploy thousands of immigration agents in that state, where residents responded with protests.
The scandal prompted Trump to declare that he would stop immigration “from the third world,” in addition to eliminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somalis, imposing new restrictions on immigration procedures and announcing new travel bans.
But Cato’s report cited that noncitizens are 8% less likely to face a criminal conviction for social program fraud and that the number of immigrants convicted of such crimes has fallen 57% since 2015.
“Unfortunately, this Congress decided to spend billions of dollars in July on a chaotic and indiscriminate program of mass deportations that will increase the deficit instead of investing in better systems and investigations to control benefit fraud,” Bier argued.
Cato’s report was published days after one from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) that found that Detention of Latino immigrants without criminal records increased sixfold in the United States since the beginning of Trump’s second presidency, in January 2025.
