1. United States
2. S.C.
3. Letter

The Trump administration has spent more than a year blaming immigrants for health-care fraud, yet its own watchdog just published a report that does not mention them once. The Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General released its semiannual report to Congress this month, covering enforcement actions from October 2025 through March 2026. It documents $5.56 billion in recoveries over six months. The largest cases in it involve corporate executives. The CEO of a health-care software company was sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay $452 million for a scheme worth more than $1 billion. An insurance broker and a marketing executive who enrolled vulnerable people in Affordable Care Act plans without their consent each got 20 years and a $180 million bill. At a May 13 press conference, Vice President JD Vance warned there "could be tens of billions of fraudulent payments in the California system" going to "illegal aliens, going to fraudulent businesses." Medicare and Medicaid chief Mehmet Oz said hundreds of millions in "questionable expenditures" were tied to "immigration-related costs." "There isn't really clear evidence of any systemic issues implicating immigrants," said Sarah Krieger, senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center. She noted the administration has cut internal enforcement funding and fired inspectors general. "They're not actually interested in solving the problem." The National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association estimates fraud costs as much as $300 billion a year, most of it providers billing for services never delivered. In May 2025, Trump commuted the 50-year sentence of Lawrence Duran, co-owner of a Miami mental health company convicted of $205 million Medicare fraud. An analysis by the California governor's office found that Trump's clemency grants have erased nearly $2 billion in victim repayment and taxpayer recovery. It is clear the immigrants are being used as a convenient scapegoat. They are not the problem. And once again, Trump is pardoning criminals who are carrying out the very crimes he is blaming on immigrants. Stop with the lies!