On February 17, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted a tweet about Medicaid coverage for immigrants that is stunning when you consider how many inaccuracies are crammed into just four sentences.
Here are five key inaccuracies in the tweet.
Mischaracterizing “non-citizen” households
The DHS tweet reproduces a KFF data graphic (graphic and full report available here) to falsely claim that up to 4 million “illegal” immigrant households will be removed from Medicaid, primarily as a result of DHS’s new public charge policy. There’s just one problem—the evidence they cite, including the specific graphic they embedded in the tweet, does not say that at all.
In reality, the graphic very clearly states it pertains to “non-citizen households.” Such mixed status households would include, for example, a household with three U.S. citizens and one legal permanent resident, and many other such households where everyone is a citizen or lawfully present and no one is undocumented. And there are more lawfully present non-citizens in the U.S. than undocumented immigrants. Bottom line: the estimate of 4 million includes millions of families that do not have an undocumented immigrant in the household. DHS’s claim grossly misrepresents the data it cites and makes a “factual” claim that is false.
Note: the DHS tweet is almost identical to and appears to be copied from a tweet citing the same KFF graphic that appeared one day earlier on the account of the White Papers Policy Institute (WPPI), an organization that espouses beliefs associated with White Supremacy, such as replacement theory. However, DHS’s tweet was stunningly even more inaccurate in that it added the mischaracterization of non-citizens as “illegal” immigrants. DHS also has a second tweet on February 17, 2026, with similar inaccuracies that appears to be copied from a WPPI tweet dated February 16, 2026. Both of these tweets mischaracterize the data, though again DHS’s tweet is even more inaccurate.
Mischaracterizing Medicaid use by “illegal aliens”
The DHS tweet also says that Medicaid “was never designed to be utilized by illegal aliens,” implying that the immigrants using Medicaid and that would be removed are undocumented and ineligible. But as we have previously covered, undocumented immigrants have never been eligible for full Medicaid coverage. The data is detailing individuals in households with an immigrant that would be disenrolled, but the actual people losing coverage in the mixed status households are U.S. citizens and lawful residents. (And again, many of the immigrants that are in the household with the U.S citizens and lawful residents are also here legally.)
And DHS should know this will harm U.S. citizens, because it is explicitly stated in the KFF graphic that DHS itself embeds! The graphic points out that 1.8 million of the 4 million (nearly half) are U.S. citizen children. (And the remaining 2.3 million includes lawfully residing children, U.S. citizen adults, and lawfully residing adults). DHS’s tweet goes on to say that “Americans are DONE fronting the bill for people who have no business being here,” when nearly half of the people are U.S. citizen children and the rest include U.S. citizen adults and others that have lawful status and explicit permission to be here. (Also, as a reminder, immigrants do pay taxes and on average use less benefits than U.S.-born individuals.)
Hurting millions of U.S. citizen children is not a “great result”
The good news is that our next point is not technically an inaccuracy; the bad news is that it is the most heartbreaking and morally bankrupt aspect of the tweet. The DHS tweet is titled “GREAT POLICIES LEAD TO GREAT RESULTS!” Yet the results here, which are explicitly stated in the graphic in the very same tweet, include that 1.8 million U.S. citizen children are losing their health insurance. (And the other 2.3 million people include lawfully residing children, U.S. citizen adults, and lawfully residing adults.) As we have covered previously, if just 1.2 million children lost their coverage, that would represent a more than 25% increase in the number of uninsured children in the United States. How could DHS or the current administration possibly celebrate 1.8 million U.S. citizen children losing their health insurance as “GREAT RESULTS!”?
And to be clear, there is no other “upside” for these families. If one of these 1.8 million U.S. citizen children has an undocumented parent, that parent is not eligible and would not be enrolled in full Medicaid, before or after the public charge policy. The policy doesn’t take that coverage away from them or any other undocumented immigrant because they never had it to begin with. The policy simply makes immigrant families so afraid that they disenroll 1.8 million of their eligible U.S. citizen children from coverage. That is the only result for these families.
Collateral damage is not “great policy”
DHS’s claim that “great policies lead to great results” is also dishonest because DHS itself has explained the results are actually collateral damage. The primary and problematic policy driving the KFF data that DHS cites is DHS’s proposed new policy on the public charge test for immigration applications. In that proposed regulation, DHS itself admits that the enrollment impacts of the policy “relate predominantly to enrollment decisions made by those who are not subject to the public charge” test. In other words, the millions of people who will disenroll are not only not undocumented, the majority of them are not even the intended targets of DHS’s “great policy.” DHS’s policy is so poorly designed that it will lead millions of people to disenroll despite the fact that the policy doesn’t even apply to them. One day, a court may strike down this DHS public charge regulation because it is so overly broad and unreasonable in its impact, as was the case with a proposed public charge regulation during the first Trump Administration. We don’t need to litigate that in this blog; the takeaway point is that most of the 4 million U.S. citizens and lawfully present immigrants who will lose coverage have been openly identified by DHS itself as collateral damage, and quite literally the opposite of evidence of “great policy.”
Scaring the families of U.S. citizen children is not bold action
Finally, DHS’s tweet says that “households will be UNENROLLED” and “REMOVED” from Medicaid. These words communicate bold action on the part of DHS, and yet that is not what is happening here. The 4 million people losing coverage are, as the KFF data graphic notes, eligible people who disenroll due to the reasonable fears in their families. These are Medicaid-eligible people voluntarily disenrolling themselves, and as mentioned earlier, most of them doing so even though the public charge policy doesn’t actually apply to them. And in 1.8 million cases, families are so afraid that they would voluntarily disenroll their own U.S. citizen children from health insurance. It is disingenuous for DHS to characterize this as a good thing, much less portray it as an intentional, bold act by DHS.
Conclusion
DHS’s tweet is disturbingly inaccurate, and worse, celebrates the prospect of 1.8 million U.S. citizen children losing their health insurance. To make matters worse, the tweet appears to be copied from an organization aligned with White Supremacy. I wish I could dismiss this as nothing more than one isolated and ill-conceived tweet. Unfortunately, at this point a clear pattern is undeniable: this is just the latest in a series of public statements that grossly mischaracterize the coverage of immigrants in Medicaid, in what appears to be an attempt to turn anti-immigrant sentiment into anti-Medicaid sentiment. And the related policy proposals irrationally target lawfully present immigrants even if it means hurting millions of U.S. citizen children in the process. Let’s be clear: 1.8 million U.S. citizen children losing their health care is not a great result. It is a terrible result that will take away U.S. citizens’ opportunity for a healthy childhood and should not be celebrated.