OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) An Oklahoma City retiree says his Social Security benefits were suspended without warning and with no explanation given when he reached out. He worries it may have to do with the place he was born, and ongoing Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cutbacks.  

The man, James McCaffrey, who was born to an active-duty U.S. soldier at an overseas Army base, says because of recent comments from DOGE leader Elon Musk, he’s worried his benefits were cut because of his foreign birthplace.
Earlier this month, Musk, the billionaire head of DOGE, pushed for major cuts to Social Security, calling it a “Ponzi scheme,” claiming the system is rife with people fraudulently receiving benefits.

Particularly, Musk claimed during an interview with Fox Business, with no evidence, that many illegal immigrants are receiving benefits, calling for them to be removed from Social Security’s rolls.

The Hill reported economists say the levels of fraud Musk has talked about “just don’t exist.”

Earlier this month, NBC News reported former Social Security administrator Martin O’Malley warned that DOGE’s cuts to Social Security could disrupt benefits for millions of Americans for the first time since Social Security’s founding.

Now, McCaffrey worries he may have been one of the first of them.

An unexpected bill and unanswered questions

McCaffrey said he started to think something was often when he received an unexpected Medicare bill.
“It said that I needed to pay $740 before the 25th of this month or I was going to lose my Medicare,” McCaffrey said.
That seemed odd, since his Medicare payment is normally deducted from his Social Security check.
“So I called Medicare,” he said. “They returned my call after a wait and told me that they were unable to process it through my Social Security payment, that there was some problem with it. We talked for a bit. He kind of let it out that he thinks it’s a possibility that my Social Security was suspended.”

And that definitely didn’t make sense to McCaffrey.
“I thanked him for his time and called Social Security,” he said.
After more than two and a half hours on hold with Social Security, he finally got a callback.
“They confirmed that my account was suspended,” McCaffrey said.
He says Social Security never sent him any sort of notice this was happening, so he can’t be certain the exact day his benefits were canceled.

But he knows it must have been sometime between the day he received his February Social Security check early in the month, and Feb. 27, the date written on the bill he received from Medicare.

He asked the Social Security agent if there was anything she could do to fix it.
“She said she was going to input some stuff and that she hoped that would take care of it,” he said.
And by the next morning, sure enough, the issue had been fixed.

“I just got a simple email on my phone,” McCaffrey said. “It said that my normal payment was going to resume in April.”

The email didn’t mention anything about the March payment he never received.

He took it upon himself to check his bank account, where he saw his March check had since been deposited.

“Well, that’s fine and dandy,” McAffrey said. “I enjoyed that, but they gave me no explanation.”

For him to get an explanation, he had to become his own detective of sorts.

He thought back to an experience he had two years ago when he first went to a Social Security office to apply for benefits.
“The first person I talked to at the Social Security Administration told me that I was not an American citizen,” McCaffrey said.
McCaffrey was born on a U.S. Army base in Germany, where his father was stationed for active duty.

He has an American birth certificate officially stamped and sealed by the federal government.
“I was on American soil,” he said. “I’m American. She told me I was going to need to hire a lawyer, get a naturalization before I could even apply for Social Security.”
But when he returned another day with his birth certificate and passport, a different employee told him there was no issue.
“Got a different person, presented my things to him, and he says, ‘I don’t need these. You’re fine. I don’t know what. She’s just misinformed.’ And I’ve never had a problem with anything until [Tuesday],” McCaffrey said.
Then he remembered something he had recently seen on TV.

Elon Musk, the billionaire in charge of DOGE, spoke about Social Security during an interview on Fox Business Network.

In the interview, Musk suggested, without citing evidence, that non-citizens in large numbers are receiving Social Security benefits, and called for them to be purged from the system.

“[Federal entitlements] is also a mechanism by which Democrats attract and retain illegal immigrants, by essentially paying them,” Musk said during the March 10 interview on Fox Business. “If we turn off this gigantic money magnet for illegal immigrants, then they will leave.”
That made McAffrey wonder about his own situation.
“I think they went into Social Security and suspended all foreign addresses, whether you reside at home, born on them,” he said.
KFOR reached out to the Social Security Administration for an explanation, but officials declined to comment, citing confidentiality rules, but the news station put them in touch with McCaffrey.

He says a representative with the Social Security Administration called him on Wednesday, but still offered no explanation for why his benefits were terminated.
“It makes me wonder how many other people are going to get or have gotten that same Medicare letter,” McCaffrey said.
He worries about people who may not have the time and resources he had to get to the bottom of what happened and get his benefits back.
“I’ve been a diligent Boy Scout type, I prepared,” he said. “But, no, I shouldn’t have to.”

McAffrey, 66, says there was one thing he most looked forward about retirement.

“More time with the grandkids,” McAffrey told Nexstar’s KFOR.

He said he made sure to save up enough retirement money to—quite frankly—spoil his three grandkids.
“I went out and bought [my granddaughter] a new jacket,” McCaffrey said. “She’s thrilled. And then her sister says, ‘well, you know, she got a new jacket. Where’s mine?’ I said, ‘I’ll get you one.’”

He also looked forward to being able to travel more with his wife, who is nearing retirement herself.

But he thought all those dreams would have to come to a halt, after he opened his mail on Tuesday.

“I’d hate to have to turn around and say, ‘Well, I have to worry about my next check,’” he said.
He also worries about people who may not share the same savings or the same financial cushion that he had to fall back on. “And you interrupt that for seven days, two weeks or even longer, and they’re in bad trouble,” he said. “They could be out of the house. They could be out of food. I don’t know.”