California is home to the lion’s share of illegal immigrant families in the United States with children who received federal welfare assistance in 2024, according to a federal report published on June 10.
More than 80 percent of all nationwide cash assistance allocated to such households was spent in California. The report tracked $759 million in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) spent in 2024 on families headed by a parent living in the country illegally.
In those cases, the child qualified for federal welfare, even though the parent was excluded from the federal program because of immigration status.
“These cases receive relatively little public attention, yet ... data show that they are far from a negligible part of the program,” wrote authors David Swegle, director of the Office of Family Assistance at the Administration for Children and Families under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Alex J. Adams, assistant secretary at the Administration for Children and Families, in the report.
Nationally, the federal government paid 85,000 households with qualifying children receiving assistance who were living with their illegal immigrant parents in the U.S. in 2024.
“Although the benefit is formally paid on behalf of the child, it still supports a household that includes an immigration-status-ineligible parent,” the authors stated. “The significance of these cases therefore cannot be judged solely by the fact that the adult is not the formal recipient.”
The cases are also significant because they don’t have to adhere to the TANF rules requiring work expectations, such as regularly applying for jobs, and the payments aren’t limited to the federal 60-month lifetime limit, according to the report. The illegal immigrant families, therefore, can receive federal welfare until the child turns 18 years old.
Low-income American families are held to the federal welfare restrictions that require work participation and are restricted to a 60-month lifetime limit, the authors said.
The number of TANF cases involving an illegal immigrant parent reached nearly 850,000—or 10 percent of all cases—in 2024, up from nearly 6 percent in 2001.
Of those, nearly 78,000 households—or about 91 percent—also received federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the report revealed.
Most of the illegal immigrant parents—over 106,000—identified as Hispanic, while 5.3 percent were White, 4.3 percent were Black, and 2 percent were Asian, the report stated.
California was the primary driver of the national totals, according to the report.
In 2024, the state accounted for nearly 60,000 affected households, or about 70 percent of the national total of the illegal immigrant-headed households.
The state’s annual cash assistance paid to those homes reached about $618 million, or about 81 percent of nationwide spending on these cases, the authors reported.
The average monthly benefit in California for child-only households with illegal immigrant parents increased from an estimated $408 in 2013 to $875 in 2024—an increase of 114.5 percent, according to the report.
“No other state approached California’s combination of scale, concentration, and fiscal impact,” the authors stated in the report.
The next-largest states were New York, with about 7,635 households and about $47.5 million in annual cash assistance, followed by Massachusetts at about 3,777 households and about $27.3 million, and Washington at about 1,796 households and about $12.2 million, the report found.
From 2001 to 2024, the U.S. spent about $18.3 billion in TANF cash assistance on these cases involving illegal immigrant parents with welfare-recipient children, according to the report.
