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Wednesday, Jul. 3, 2024

Do President Joe Biden and U.S. Senate candidate Ruben Gallego support giving ‘veteran health services’ to undocumented immigrants?

Carmela Guaglianone, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting
no

Neither Biden nor Gallego has indicated support for reallocating health care resources for  veterans to undocumented immigrants. 

A prior tweet from Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake suggests the claim is referring to an agreement between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Veterans Affairs. 

Under the agreement, reached more than two decades ago, the VA’s financial services team processes medical and dental claims for services provided to detained immigrants by the ICE Health Service Corps, funded by ICE. The VA receives compensation for labor, administration and fees associated with processing the claims and makes a profit. 

President Biden separately announced plans to make recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program eligible for federal health care coverage. That would not give DACA recipients access to government-funded, veteran-specific health care services.

See a full discussion of this at Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting

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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

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The Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting is the state’s only independent, nonpartisan and collaborative nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. AZCIR's mission is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable by exposing injustice and systemic inequities through investigative journalism.

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