How many immigrants have fraudulent social security cards

1. What the prominent recent claims say — and their provenance

Tech billionaire Elon Musk and others have publicized a figure that more than 2 million migrants who entered illegally received Social Security numbers and then used them to collect benefits; that claim was repeated in multiple news pieces summarizing remarks and EBE (Evidence-Based Evaluation) data comparisons to 590,000 noncitizens in FY2022 and 964,000 in 2023 ^{[1] [2]}. Those articles report the claim and the larger context but do not, in the excerpts provided, include a primary SSA confirmation that 2+ million unlawfully entered migrants were issued SSNs or that they used them fraudulently ^{[1] [2]}.

2. What official reporting and agency documents actually show

Government and investigative records in the provided sources document identity-theft and misuse in concrete enforcement actions: a 2019 Southern District of Mississippi prosecution involved 119 defendants among whom 26 admitted to fraudulently using an American citizen’s SSN ^[3]. A 2025 ICE worksite enforcement operation identified roughly 70 illegal aliens using stolen SSNs and identities in one employment scheme, affecting more than 100 victims ^[4]. Congressional and SSA analyses estimate categories of unauthorized workers who used mismatched or fraudulent SSNs in prior studies (e.g., SSA/OCACT estimates showing 1.8 million used SSNs that did not match their name in an earlier assessment), but those figures describe past estimates and specific types of misuse rather than a clear, current count of "fraudulently obtained" SSNs among recent border crossers ^[5].

3. Numbers, categories and what they actually measure

Different sources count different things. Media reports citing hundreds of thousands or millions typically describe noncitizens issued SSNs once authorized to work or summarize EBE-like data for SSN issuance ^{[1] [2]}. By contrast, enforcement press releases and court records count prosecuted incidents of identity theft or misused SSNs in specific cases ^{[3] [4]}. Congressional research and SSA actuarial notes have broken down unauthorized-worker populations into subgroups (e.g., those who used someone else’s SSN, those with fraudulent birth certificates) but these are historical estimates and not a simple tally of "fraudulent SSN cards issued last year" ^{[5] [6]}.

4. Conflicting interpretations and partisan uses of the data

Advocates for stricter enforcement or critics of immigration policy point to prosecutions and to seizures of counterfeit cards from past large-scale rings to argue widespread fraud ^{[3] [7]}. Others — including some experts quoted in media summaries — say increased issuance of SSNs to noncitizens can reflect lawful work authorization and administrative processes rather than systemic fraud ^[1]. The CIS commentary claims as much as 75% of illegal aliens fraudulently obtain SSNs, citing a mix of sources including the Social Security Chief Actuary and advocacy groups; that figure appears in an opinion piece and is not corroborated by the enforcement counts or the SSA/OCACT breakdowns in the provided excerpts ^[8].

5. What’s missing and how to interpret the gap

Available sources do not present a single, agency-certified statistic that quantifies how many immigrants currently possess fraudulently obtained SSNs nationwide for the most recent year; instead, we have (a) counts of SSNs issued to noncitizens when lawfully authorized (reported in media summaries), (b) historical SSA estimates about unauthorized workers using mismatched SSNs, and (c) law enforcement tallies from specific investigations and prosecutions ^{[1] [5] [3] [4]}. Therefore, broad claims that millions of illegal entrants have fraudulent SSNs are not directly supported by the enforcement case counts and historical breakdowns in the provided reporting ^{[3] [4] [5]}.

6. Bottom line for readers seeking accuracy

If you want to evaluate a headline that says "X million illegal immigrants have fraudulent Social Security cards," demand clarity on three things: who produced the number, whether it counts SSNs issued lawfully to authorized noncitizens or fraudulently obtained cards, and whether that number comes from SSA administrative data, enforcement tallies, or third‑party estimates. The documents provided show concrete prosecutions and targeted investigations numbering in the dozens to low hundreds per operation ^{[3] [4]}, historical SSA estimates with categorical breakdowns ^[5], and recent media repetition of higher aggregate figures that are not substantiated in the enforcement records cited here ^{[1] [2]}. Available sources do not provide a definitive nationwide count of fraudulently obtained SSNs among migrants for the most recent year.