“Democrats want to give $1.5 trillion in welfare to illegal aliens.”

60 Minutes interview with Norah O'Donnell, on the government shutdown

Undocumented immigrants are legally ineligible for the benefits at issue, so the claim fails on its face. Federal law bars people in the country illegally from Obamacare subsidies and federal Medicaid coverage, and the Democrats' shutdown proposal would not have changed that. What Democrats actually sought was an extension of expiring ACA premium subsidies and reversal of Medicaid cuts for citizens and legal residents. The $1.5 trillion figure is a budget watchdog's estimate of the total ten-year cost of the Democrats' September funding proposal, not spending on undocumented immigrants. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calculated the plan would add $1.5 trillion to the debt over a decade; CNN noted "that figure is not about spending on undocumented people in particular."

Even Trump's own White House contradicted him. Its itemized claim put alleged health spending on "illegal immigrants and other non-citizens" at about $193 billion, roughly an eighth of Trump's number, and conceded that the majority of even that contested sum was for non-citizens in the U.S. legally. CNN, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact and KFF all rated the claim false. "Undocumented people are not eligible for either Obamacare subsidies or federal Medicaid insurance coverage." — CNN Fact Check, Nov. 3, 2025