REPORT: Social Security insolvency could speed up with illegal alien crackdown

July 1, 2025

From Fox Business: A new report warns that a side effect of the Trump administration’s push to crack down on illegal immigration could further weaken Social Security’s finances and speed up its insolvency.

Social Security’s main trust funds, when considered together, are on pace to be depleted in 2034, according to a recent analysis by Social Security’s trustees. Once the trust funds are tapped out, an automatic benefit cut of 19% would occur once the program’s ability to augment payroll tax collections with trust funds is no longer viable.

The Penn-Wharton Budget Model (PWBM) estimates that unauthorized immigrants paid about $24 billion in Social Security taxes in 2024 — though they’re unable to receive benefits unless they obtain legal resident status.

PWBM analyzed the impact of three deportation scenarios, taking into account levels of deportations and timelines for historical baseline levels of immigration and deportations to return, or not, and found that each would move up the depletion date for Social Security’s trust fund by about half a year.

From the study:

We analyze three deportation policy scenarios.

Policy 1: The government deports 10 percent of the current stock of unauthorized immigrants each year during President Trump’s four-year term, while preventing any new unauthorized immigrants from entering the country. After four years, immigration and deportation rates revert to baseline demographic projections.
Policy 2: The government deports 10 percent of the unauthorized population annually for ten years. After ten years, net unauthorized immigration returns to baseline levels.
Policy 3: Like Policy 2 except that future unauthorized immigration is halted once the remaining population has been removed. In effect, this policy permanently eliminates the presence of unauthorized immigrants in 10 years.

CLICK HERE to read the full study.

The Impact of President Trump’s Deportation Policies: The Social Security Program — Penn Wharton Budget Model https://t.co/Y620HQTJ3V

— William Glasgall (@WGlasgall) June 18, 2025