HUD Cracks Down on Illegal Aliens in Public Housing | 4.5.25

The Departments of Housing and Urban Development and Homeland Security have teamed up to evict illegal aliens from public housing and cut off their access to taxpayer-supported FHA loans. In this episode, Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce speaks to HUD Secretary Scott Turner about the effort to reverse former President Biden's lax approach to housing assistance.
That approach allowed illegal aliens to take advantage of taxpayer-supported housing programs. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley.
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The following is an interview between Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce and U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner.
Mr. Secretary, thanks for making the time to talk to us today.
My first question, President Trump obviously announced a ton of tariffs, his Liberation Day tariffs. What was your reaction to that? Thank you, Tim.
It's great to be with you. You know, President Trump, he campaigned on tariffs.
He talks about tariffs every day. And so those that are surprised by this decision haven't really been paying attention in our country.
President Trump is an American first president. He's an America first leader.
And so he cares about American people. He cares about trade in our country.
And on a global stage, he just wants, and we all want, fair trade. 77 million people voted for President Trump, and they know that this change was coming.
And so right now, you know, it's hard. We're in an economic transition in our country.
There's discomfort. But Tim, discomfort brings growth.
And I think that's what's going on in our country right now. When you talk about Liberation Day, President Trump, under his leadership, literally is setting America free from the grips of other foreign global economies that have held literally us captive for all of these years.
And so now, you know, it's reciprocity. If they're going to send terrorists on us, we send terrorists on them.
And this is beneficial for the American people. And so right now, it seems hard.
Right now, it seems difficult. But we will not only survive this, but I think we'll thrive through it in the days ahead.
I want to move now to you and Secretary Noem at DHS have partnered in this mission to get illegal aliens out of public housing.

Can you explain a little bit of how this process is going to work, HUD and DHS working together? Yes. So as you alluded to, Secretary Norm and I, we signed a partnership, MOU, if you will,

to ensure that American taxpayer dollars are going to American citizens as it pertains to HUD-funded housing. Previously, in the Biden administration, there were horrible, irresponsible immigration laws, border security laws.
And so you have 12 plus million people coming over our borders, and they were prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens. And so this MOU ensures that taxpayer dollars will go for American citizens that are living in HUD funded housing.
And so they've done a great job securing the border, Secretary Noem, President Trump and all of our partners in the country. But now it's how do we protect the resources that we have and ensuring that they go to the American people, in particular as it pertains to housing that's funded by HUD.
Do we know how many illegal aliens are currently in public housing? We don't know the exact number of illegal aliens in public housing. We do know that there's 9 million total residents in public housing, government-funded, subsidized housing.
But we also know 59% of illegal alien families use at least one of the welfare services in our country, which costs us about $42 billion a year. So $42 billion of taxpayer money are going towards welfare-type programs for illegal aliens.
And so, you know, this is a big reason why we signed this MOU. It's a big reason why we also did the FHA revised residency requirement order that we sent the other day to keep mortgages that are insured by taxpayers to go to American citizens and no longer to illegal aliens.
And so while we don't know the number, we are putting these things in process to control the resources and protect American taxpayer dollars. And I read a New York Post article that mentioned the 9 million residents in public and subsidized housing.
But part of the reason that the Post article said that we don't know how many

of those are illegal is because of bad information sharing between the various local and federal

agencies, I would guess. Do you know how that gets fixed? So we're putting financial controls

in place now, and information sharing is a top priority here. Just like, and I'm going to go

back to the MOU that we have with Secretary Nome. That's a personnel issue.
It's a technology deal that we're signing with them so that we have people inside the agency working together to make sure that we have the proper data of who's living inside of HUD funding housing. And so that's a priority for us going forward.
And we do know there's about 24,000 ineligible members

in HUD housing. And these are household members who marked non-continent on a residency requirement,

which was part of the application, which the Biden administration was allowing to happen.

And so we are on top of that to get control of who is living inside of HUD funding housing. Great

question by you. And yes, that is a priority for us.
So I want to go now to the FHA part of this. How does the FHA process work for illegal aliens? I feel like a lot of Americans would look at that and be like, how is this legal? Right.
And so what we did with the FHA rule that you're alluding to is we removed the non-permanent residence category, which was used by the Biden administration. And this allowed illegal aliens to use federal taxpayer resources to purchase a home.
And so we removed that category out of the FHA mortgage-backed HUD-funded money because this was allowed, and that's how illegal aliens were able to secure mortgages, but that will no longer be the case going forward. Do you know how big of a share of FHA that one category consisted of? You know, I don't know yet, but hopefully we can get back to you.
There's about 750,000 borrowers in fiscal year 24 that had FHA mortgages. And we want to make sure that all of these are American citizens.
So it seems like the FHA may have a similar problem as public housing is that there's an information problem where you don't actually know. You can't tell if these people are illegal or not.
How does that get fixed? So You have to go through this case by case to see which of these people that maybe are suspect are actually illegal or here legitimately? Well, yes. And like I say, you know, we're creating those dashboards right now and working within HUD and other agencies across the federal government so that we can ensure that the data that we have is accurate.
It has been a problem in the years previous to us coming, but it's also been allowed for people not to say whether or not they're legal or not. And so we do have measures in place going forward to make sure that people are legal.
But again, as I said before, we are laser focused on making sure that we have the proper data for people that are living in HUD-funded housing and receiving FHA mortgages. And final question, I guess, maybe, is this something that DOGE can help with? I feel like if it's a lot of technical issues, that's kind of a lot of what DOGE does is get in and kind of revamp the technical aspects of these things.
Yeah, you know, at HUD, we have a DOGE task force, and we have a great partnership with DOGE as it pertains to the technology, as it pertains to the data sourcing and resourcing. So, yes, this will be something that we can work together with our DOGE team, who actually is a team inside of HUD, to make sure that we have the proper data going forward.
All right. That takes care of my questions.
If there is anything I missed, anything that you think is important that you want people to know about this work that you're doing with DHS, feel free. Well, I would just say for your listeners that they can be confident in knowing that we are putting American citizens first and we're putting our country first from the president's leadership with the Liberation Day, with the tariffs, with making housing affordability better, with making the cost of living come down with his executive orders.
We are laser focused and very deliberate about the resources, taxpayer dollars that we have at HUD and I know across the federal government to make sure that we're being good stewards of American taxpayer dollars. And so for those that are listening, I would say rest assured, be confident in knowing that even through this time of transition, this time of change, it is for the posterity of our nation.
It's for the benefit of our nation, not just now, but for generations to come. And so stick with us, stay faithful to it, and understand that through this process that the American people are top of mind.
All right, Mr. Secretary, I really appreciate you making the time out of your busy schedule to talk to us.
Oh, absolutely. Thank you, Tim.

That was Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce interviewing HUD Secretary Scott Turner,

and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.