HUD secretary says agency found payment errors, signed MOU with DHS to verify recipients' citizenship

Secretary Scott Turner described steps the Department of Housing and Urban Development has taken to detect and prevent improper payments in HUD-funded programs and said the agency has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Homeland Security to verify recipient eligibility.

Asked about efforts to "crack down on widespread fraud," Turner said HUD took an inventory of every program and reviewed its agency financial report. He said the review "found billions of dollars of payment error" and that HUD found "payments going to, tens of thousands of dead people, ineligible, tenants around our country." He said HUD "signed the MOU with the, Department of Homeland Security to make sure that everybody that receives HUD funded housing is indeed an American citizen."

Turner also said the department had "stopped FHA mortgages, from going to illegals around our country," and emphasized that "American people are our only priority" when allocating HUD-backed housing. Those statements in the interview are presented as the secretary's account; the broadcast did not include independent confirmation or responses from other agencies.

The interviewer asked Turner about taxpayer expense and program integrity; Turner replied by citing the agency's review and the DHS MOU as administrative measures to reduce improper payments. The programmatic consequences, enforcement steps, legal authorities invoked by the MOU, and any operational changes to program eligibility were not described in detail during the segment.

Turner's claims about the scale and causes of improper payments, the number of affected recipients, and the operational effects of the MOU were not independently quantified in the interview and remain subject to external verification. The segment closed without additional documents or follow-up agency statements provided on-air.