A White House effort led by Vice President JD Vance and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has centered on sweeping claims that immigrants are defrauding the federal government. But the assertions, including a budget-balancing figure that relies on implausib
For months. Donald Trump’s relationship with JD Vance has been a kind of ongoing sitcom—except it comes with real policy. In a televised Cabinet meeting in May. Trump said of his vice president. “He looks like Eliot Ness. ” and added that Vance’s posture “looks like a movie. ” with administration officials “pretended to laugh.” The comparison. involving a 1930s Prohibition-era Chicago lawman. landed with obvious confusion: Trump appears to have mixed up the infamous figure with Kevin Costner’s portrayal of Ness in the 1987 film “The Untouchables.”.
Behind the jokes, Trump—who is reportedly becoming “ever more impatient” with Vance—has been taunting and prodding in ways that track with the hard line Vance and Stephen Miller are taking on immigration-related fraud claims.
Their latest pitch was built around a public “task force” meeting in late May. framed as an investigation into purported fraud. It read less like oversight and more like performance. Miller’s remarks offered the kind of certainty the evidence has not matched. “We could balance the federal budget if the only dollars that went out of the treasury went to individuals who were properly. lawfully. correctly eligible to receive them. ” Miller said.
The claim becomes even harder to swallow when placed alongside the White House’s own implied scale. Fact checkers have pointed to the federal government’s budget deficit in 2025—$1.8 trillion—and noted that fraud. even under the most generous estimates. would be only a small fraction of that number. To reach $1.8 trillion through theft at the level the claim suggests. the math becomes absurd: with approximately 52 million immigrants living in the U.S. every one would have to be stealing nearly $35. 000 a year from government coffers.
Even so. the event carried another message. delivered more carefully: that the biggest “fraud” problem is about immigrants receiving benefits that are supposed to go only to American citizens. Republicans avoided the words “migrants” or “immigrants,” but leaned heavily on dog whistles. Miller did not fully stay within the boundaries of coded language either—he blamed the “Somalia refugee problem. ” despite Somali refugees being welcomed in Minnesota in the late 1990s.
The most visible case Republicans pointed to was a massive Minnesota food assistance fraud case. and the way it was framed has mattered. The woman at the center. Aimee Bock. is white. and the victims included many food pantries and schools serving a racially diverse community. The White House narrative did not stop there. There were also mentions of Medicaid fraud in Arizona and California—cases that flew under most Americans’ radar but have been a major focus within right-wing circles. The allegations referenced people involved “though far from all” with foreign-sounding names.
Fraud, in other words, is not imaginary. There are real problems in health and welfare spending in the U.S. But the magnitude and the cause are where the claims start to unravel. The story built by Vance and Miller leans on immigration as the engine; the record points elsewhere.
A lot of the fraud environment, the argument goes, traces to the Covid-19 pandemic. Government spending expanded rapidly to protect the economy, while federal infrastructure to manage it lagged behind. Another driver cited is the reliance on block grants rather than direct spending on people in need—something that has expanded under decades of GOP pressure. Those grants can be wasteful on their own. and they also can make it easier for fraudsters to get access to federal money. The credibility of the White House motives is questioned further by a separate policy fact: Trump has slashed the federal work force. including the people who can detect and eradicate fraud in federal programs.
Still, there’s enough truth in the existence of fraud for the political story to piggyback on. Vague talk from Vance and Miller is filled in for their audience by a figure who has built his brand on allegations—Nick Shirley. a MAGA propagandist who rose to fame in 2025 with shady videos claiming to expose daycare fraud in Minnesota. His story was quickly debunked. but it didn’t stop the White House from using his false claims as a pretext to flood Minneapolis with immigration enforcement.
That enforcement effort soon turned to violence, according to the account: two shooting deaths of citizens at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol officers.
Shirley’s output has not slowed. In recent weeks. he has continued publishing videos alleging welfare and voter fraud. mostly in California—claims that are described as unlikely and “often swiftly debunked.” The point. as framed here. isn’t verification. In right-wing social media ecosystems, content that signals “fraud,” especially when paired with non-white faces in the imagery, spreads quickly.
That dynamic feeds into a broader narrative that immigrants are overrunning blue states—enabled. in this retelling. by Democratic leaders too focused on “wokeness” to recognize the alleged truth. The logic offered by those narratives also aims at a specific kind of audience emotion: the suggestion that only racists will say openly what is supposedly happening.
The consequences don’t stay online. Shirley’s campaign has metastasized around a specific fight in California: Assembly Bill 2624. The bill would expand privacy protections currently offered to domestic violence victims and healthcare providers to people who provide legal and other services to immigrants. The provision would allow professionals in those roles to keep their home address secret. in response to harassment and death threats they have received for offering legal and other services to immigrant communities.
Shirley has called it the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” and presented himself as a victim of censorship—claiming he can’t access and publish the home address of an immigration lawyer or a nurse whose clinic serves an immigrant community.
When Salon reached out to the bill’s author. Assemblywoman Mia Bonta. her office sent a statement: “People working in immigrant services are being followed home. receiving death threats. and having their personal information weaponized against them.” Her argument stands the confrontation on its head: the focus isn’t on stopping legitimate scrutiny. It’s on protecting people who are targeted for doing lawful work.
Shirley’s claim that the bill puts “journalists at civil risk for investigating fraud” is described here as false on multiple levels. The core accusation is that legitimate journalists investigating fraud don’t need to follow people who work in social or health services home—even if they suspect wrongdoing. The broader criticism is that Shirley is presenting himself as a “journalist” while rejecting basic responsibility to facts.
All of it, in this telling, points back to the political choice made at the top: if Vance and Miller were truly focused on fraud, they would be pushing for transparency on Trump rather than chasing allegations that turn immigrants into the centerpiece.
The article argues they should instead be releasing the “still-secretive details” of Trump’s ongoing corruption and trying to block a $1.8 billion “slush fund” meant. it claims. to pay off cronies and people who commit crimes on Trump’s behalf. It also says the administration should release the Epstein files and open the books on Trump’s various “fundraising” schemes—from his White House ballroom to a purported presidential library. And it argues that someone focused on fraud would work to eject the convicted felon who currently occupies the Oval Office.
But beneath those demands is a simpler accusation: the right’s war on immigrants is described as racism and bigotry, alongside an attempt to chase power. The argument here is that Vance and Miller view immigration as a way to keep the MAGA “gravy train” moving after Trump.
Whether that strategy holds. the piece suggests. may be constrained by how the public has reacted to the administration’s broader immigration campaign. It cites horrors and deaths tied to Trump’s “mass deportation campaign. ” and says most Americans—including a reported 25% of the president’s 2024 voters—oppose the administration’s immigration agenda. It frames the current wave of dubious or misleading “fraud” stories as competing against the reality captured in videos of ICE agents abusing “innocent civilians. ” and the massive protests at detention centers accused of neglect and torture of undocumented immigrants.
In the end, the fight over “fraud” is presented as both a political wager and a rhetorical shield. Fraud may exist. but the scale and targets described in the White House push are treated as a cover story—one that. in the face of violence and fear. could look like “weak tea” rather than the urgent truth it claims to be.
JD Vance Stephen Miller immigrant fraud federal budget deficit 2025 task force meeting late May California Assembly Bill 2624 Mia Bonta Nick Shirley ICE Border Patrol Minneapolis enforcement