Minnesota Dems Vow ‘Fight To The End’ To Preserve Free Health Care For Illegal Migrants

As Minnesota faces a growing budget crisis tied to runaway spending, a contentious debate has erupted over the state’s taxpayer-funded health care program for illegal immigrants. Despite a ballooning budget deficit and bipartisan calls for restraint, Democrats are doubling down on their commitment to the program—even as it collapses under the weight of unsustainable costs.

Governor Tim Walz, a far-left Democrat and the 2024 Democratic vice-presidential nominee, has admitted the program is experiencing “unplanned” growth. Yet his party—the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL)—remains determined to protect it, regardless of the financial consequences for the state’s hardworking taxpayers.

Lawmakers in Saint Paul announced a compromise on Thursday that will reduce benefits under MinnesotaCare after enrollment exploded well beyond expectations. Originally intended to serve approximately 5,700 illegal immigrants, the program saw enrollment swell to more than 20,000 in just a matter of months, according to the St. Cloud Times.

“No one got everything they wanted,” Gov. Walz said during a press conference announcing the agreement.

The revised plan will allow children who are in the country illegally to remain enrolled in the program but will cut off access to adult enrollees, with the termination of benefits scheduled for December 21.

Republicans in the legislature, who have repeatedly sounded the alarm over the program’s reckless spending, emphasized that health care is still accessible through the private market. “Those that are here illegally — they can still join the private market, so it’s not that health care is being denied in any way,” said Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth.

Still, progressive Democrats are outraged over even modest cuts to the program. On Thursday, far-left legislators held a press conference decrying the move, with DFL State Senator Alice Mann leading the charge against what she claimed was a morally bankrupt decision.

“I want to just put an exclamation point on what you just heard,” Mann said, flanked by over two dozen Democrat lawmakers. “We had negotiations with a party that does not care about the well-being of people. With a party who was willing to throw the entire state of Minnesota in disarray, to shut down the government, and in return for not doing that, they wanted to take away health care from 20,000 people.”

Mann, who has become one of the loudest voices defending the bloated program, dismissed arguments for fiscal responsibility. “There is no fiscal responsibility when you do this,” she said. “When we take away people’s health care, they end up in the emergency department. It costs more money for everyone in our community. It costs hospitals more money. It puts our healthcare system in disarray. It makes our healthcare system weaker.”

She went even further, accusing Republicans of cruelty and racism—tired and divisive rhetoric that has become all too familiar from the modern left. “So, what they did was purely cruel. It was cruelty dressed as fiscal responsibility,” she claimed.

“But all these other people who look different, who speak a different language, who have different customs, we do not care about them, we will not pay for them, we will not welcome them, and they can suffer, they can die, and we don’t care,” Mann alleged, adding, “That’s what happened today, and that’s why we are here, because we are not going to let this go down. We are gonna fight this to the very end.”

As Minnesota struggles to close a widening budget gap, the DFL’s priorities are becoming crystal clear: protect progressive pet projects at any cost—even if that means asking taxpayers to foot the bill for programs benefiting those who broke the law to enter the country. Meanwhile, conservatives in the state are standing up for fiscal sanity and the rule of law, warning that unchecked spending and open-borders policy are unsustainable burdens on American families.