President Trump commented Monday about ‘looking into’ deporting Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Here’s what we know about Musk’s citizenship status.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump feud revived in ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ vote
Elon Musk took to X to threaten any lawmakers who vote for President Donald Trump’s sweeping spending bill.
- On July 1, President Trump visited “Alligator Alcatraz,” a new migrant detention facility in the Florida Everglades.
- While in Florida, Trump commented on the possibility of deporting Elon Musk, reigniting their feud.
- The feud stems from Musk’s criticism of Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax and budget bill.
- Musk is a U.S. citizen, making deportation unlikely.
(This story has been updated to correct where President Trump answered questions regarding Elon Musk.)
President Donald Trump’s tour of a new temporary migrant detention facility in the Florida Everglades came with a press gaggle wondering about Elon Musk’s criticism of Trump’s since-passed “big, beautiful” tax and budget bill. The two have been squabbling publicly about it again.
Tesla CEO, SpaceX founder and South Africa-born billionaire Elon Musk became a “special” federal employee in February, allowing him to work for the federal government with or without pay for a limited time.
Now, Musk is coming off the heels of a very public falling out with President Trump shortly after leaving his position as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in May.
Ahead of his Alligator Alcatraz visit, in an early-morning Truth Social post, Trump said that “without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa.”
As he boarded a helicopter on White House grounds en route to a Florida immigration detention facility, reporters asked the president whether or not he would deport Musk. He didn’t directly answer. But had this to say:
“We’ll have to take a look,” Trump said. “We might have to put DOGE on Elon. 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.”
While there are some exceptions, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, you generally must be a U.S. citizen to work for the federal government. And since supporting President Trump’s 2024 campaign, flurries of comments on social media posts about Musk are often shrouded in questions about his citizenship status.
Following the news of his short-lived job and due to his and President Donald Trump’s strong views on immigration, “Is Elon Musk a U.S. citizen?” has been a popular question throughout Trump and Musk’s relationship and subsequent falling out. The short answer is yes.
Regardless of his current employment status (or lack thereof) with the Trump administration, it’s still one of the most commonly asked questions about the wealthiest man in the world.
Here’s where Elon Musk’s citizenship status stands, which countries he grew up in and where he currently lives.
What is Alligator Alcatraz?
“Alligator Alcatraz” is the nickname for a detention center next to Everglades National Park at Miami-Dade Collier Training and Transition Airport, a 39-square-mile airport facility with a 10,500-foot runway.
“This is gonna be able to have more than 3,000 illegals, can be processed through here,” the governor recently told “Fox and Friends” co-host Steve Doocy as he showed off construction at the facility. “We’ve got a massive runway right behind us where any of the federal assets, if they wanna fly these people back to their own country, they can do it one-stop-shop.”
Protests sprung up against the new facility and have continued throughout its construction from activists concerned about harsh and cruel migrant treatment, environmentalists and conservationists concerned about what housing 3,000-5,000 people will have on the environmentally precarious Everglades, and from the Miccosukee and Seminole Tribe of Florida who have denounced the development of detainment camps on indigenous land.
Are Elon Musk and Donald Trump still friends?
Musk left his position with DOGE at the end of May and, about a week later, on June 5, started posting accusatory tweets on his social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
He berated Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” calling it a “disgusting abomination,” and even accused Trump of being involved with the late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in now-deleted posts on X.
But on June 11, Musk posted on X, “I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far.”
Musk hasn’t changed his opinion about the bill yet, at least publicly. While Musk has deleted some of his more inflammatory posts about Trump, some of those posts about killing the bill are still up on his X profile.
And it seems the feud has been reignited after Trump’s comments on Musk at his Alligator Alcatraz visit on Tuesday, July 1.
Is Elon Musk a U.S. citizen? Can President Trump deport Elon Musk?
“Musk has been a U.S. citizen since 2002 according to a 2023 biography of Musk by journalist Walter Isaacson,” Politifact and CNN reported.
Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1971. His father, Errol Musk, is a South African businessman, politician, mine owner, consultant, and property developer. His mother, Maye Musk, is Canadian. Through her, Elon Musk also has Canadian citizenship.
In his college years, Musk came to the U.S. on an Exchange Visitor Visa, which allows visa holders to teach, lecture, instruct, study, conduct research, consult, receive graduate training and more.
In October, the Washington Post reported that Musk was — at one point — working illegally during his startup days in Silicon Valley, while he and his brother were creating PayPal. President Biden later echoed the Post’s report, which went viral on X, Musk’s social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Musk fired back on X, saying that he “was in fact allowed to work in the U.S.,” and described his immigration journey as a “gray area,” CNN reported.
Regardless of whether he was working illegally at the start of his career, Musk is now a U.S. citizen and maintains his primary residence in the U.S. This means it could be difficult for the Trump administration to find grounds for his deportation.
Where did Elon Musk grow up? Elon Musk’s nationality
Musk was mostly raised in South Africa. He moved to Canada when he was 17 to study at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
In 1992, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he graduated with bachelor’s degrees in economics and physics.
Does Elon Musk live in America? Where does Elon Musk currently live?
Yes, Elon Musk lives in the U.S. Currently, his main residence is in Boca Chica, Texas, the location of SpaceX Headquarters.
He has a tiny home and a small two-bedroom home in the area, according to Architectural Digest.
“In 2021, Musk revealed in a post on X that he was living in a three-bedroom ranch, also in Boca Chica. He claimed to be renting the $50,000 property from SpaceX,” Architectural Digest reported in January.
“Like his tiny home, the property is a short drive from his company’s beachfront launch site, SpaceX Starbase.”
Is Elon Musk the richest man in the world?
According to Forbes’ real-time billionaires list, Musk is the richest man in the world as of Tuesday, July 1, 2025 with an estimated net worth of $398.3 billion (although Reuters puts him over $400 billion). He is worth more than $130 billion more than the next person in line, Oracle founder Larry Ellison.
Forbes’ current list of top billionaires is:
- Elon Musk, $398.3 billion
- Larry Ellison, $262.5 billion
- Mark Zuckerberg, $247.5 billion
- Jeff Bezos, $233.4 billion
- Warren Buffett, $152 billion
Contributing: Kinsey Crowley, USA TODAY
