President Donald Trump responded to questions about Elon Musk, specifically if the Tesla CEO could be facing deportation, with the president responding, “we’ll take a look.”
Trump answered questions from reporters on Tuesday, July 1, as Musk continues to criticize the president’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” — the legislation narrowly passed in the Senate on Tuesday.
“He (Musk) is upset,” Trump said to reporters. “He’s upset that he’s losing his EV mandate and he’s very upset about things. But you know, he could lose a lot more than that.”
Trump also said he would look into deporting Musk.
“We might have to put DOGE on Elon,” Trump said. “You know what DOGE is? DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies.”
Musk has warned that he would boost primary challenges to defeat Republican lawmakers who vote for the legislation, and attacked the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” with posts on his official X account on June 30.
“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame!” Musk wrote. “And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”
Is Elon Musk a citizen of the United States?
Yes, Musk is a U.S. citizen. Musk has been a U.S. citizen since 2002, according to a 2023 biography of Musk by journalist Walter Isaacson, CNN reported.
Musk was born in 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa, to a Canadian mother and a South African father. He moved to Canada at 17 and came to the U.S. in 1992 to study at the University of Pennsylvania, according to PolitiFact.
Can Elon Musk be deported?
U.S. citizens cannot be deported, though the government can attempt to take away the citizenship of a naturalized citizen if it can show the naturalization was gained through fraud, according to the Immigrant Defense Project. For instance, if a person did not disclose an arrest or conviction on the naturalization application, they could be vulnerable to deportation.
USA Today contributed to this story.
Natassia Paloma may be reached at npaloma@gannett.com, @NatassiaPaloma on Twitter; natassia_paloma on Instagram, and Natassia Paloma Thompson on Facebook.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Can Elon Musk be deported? Is Musk a US citizen? What to know amid Trump feud
Reporting by Natassia Paloma, El Paso Times / El Paso Times
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