White House puts pressure on immigrants to “self-deception” to cancel social security numbers

Since taking office, the Trump administration has taken active action to revoke temporary legal status for thousands of immigrants that have been allowed to enter the country under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

According to documents reviewed by the New York Times, the government is taking harsh steps to effectively cancel the Social Security Numbers they legally obtain, putting pressure on some of these immigrants and others who have “self-deception” in their legal status.

The goal is to remove these people from the use of critical financial services such as bank accounts and credit cards, and their access to government benefits.

The effort depends on a surprising new strategy: repurposing the “main file of death” of Social Security, which has been used for years to track dead people who should no longer receive benefits, including the names of living people who the government believes should be considered dead. As added to the death database, they will be blacklisted from coveted forms of identity, allowing them to make money and spend money.

The government’s names are limited to convicted criminals and those “suspected terrorists,” the documents show. But officials said the effort could be expanded to include others without authorization.

Leland Dudek, acting commissioner for the Social Security Bureau, wrote in an email to staff that their “financial life” would be “terminated.”

The move is the latest in a series of extraordinary actions by the Trump administration, driven by Elon Musk and the Department of Efficiency to leverage personal data long restricted on immigration authorities to promote President Trump’s vision of mass immigration crackdowns. This week, several senior IRS officials resigned after tax agencies said it would help find undocumented immigrants.

Dudek in February reached an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security in February that would provide the last known address for 98,000 people to immigrate and customs enforcement for federal agencies that deport undocumented immigrants. According to 12 current and former officials, the personal information held by Social Security is closely protected by previous governments, who said the agency has never had such extensive data sharing with immigration authorities before.

By using Social Security data to blacklist immigrants, the government is requisitioning a widely-popular agency that sends benefits primarily to retired Americans and people with disabilities – working to relax Mr. Trump’s “open border” policy as a Democratic predecessor.

According to interviews with current and former employees, the new enforcement role of Social Security is raising concerns that wrong data could lead to people, including U.S. citizens, mistakenly or improperly being listed, making their financial lives even higher.

“Immigration enforcement is not within the scope of the Social Security Agency,” said Jason Fichtner. “The potential for mistakes can be very important.”

White House spokesman Elizabeth Huston said changes in social security will help promote the president’s immigration goals. “President Trump has promised to deport a large scale and eliminated monetary incentives for illegal foreigners to stay in the currency, and we will encourage them to deceive themselves,” she wrote in a statement. “He is fulfilling his promise to the American people.”

Mr. Musk is driving many changes in the Social Security Agency, his baseless conspiracy theories of fraud against undocumented immigrants, and the agency sends billions of dollars to the deceased. Mr. Trump made many statements.

The billionaire, Mr. Trump’s top adviser, also said there is no evidence that Democrats use the agency to grant immigrants Social Security numbers to qualify for maintaining their benefits in the United States so that they can change the country’s demographic information.

Meanwhile, Mr. Musk’s team of governors has positioned the Social Security Agency as a shocking beneficiary. Staff layoffs have been stuck in some local on-site offices, and the recipients say it is becoming increasingly difficult to receive services. Now, under Mr. Trump, the agency is carrying out additional tasks for immigration enforcement, including those entering under the Biden administration, according to a senior White House official who has spoken publicly without authorization. Mr Biden allowed many immigrants to temporarily enter the country to inspire them to avoid illegally crossing border countries. These people are eligible to work in the United States, obtain a Social Security number, and in some cases receive federal benefits.

More than 500,000 immigrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti were among the so-called parole programs during the Biden administration and could fly to the country if they had financial sponsors and passed security checks. Another 900,000 immigrants used CBP One (a telephone application used by Biden Administration) to enter the port of entry and have the opportunity to stay in the United States.

The Trump administration targets both plans. The plan allows immigrants to fly to the end later this month, and it has legal status on immigration status that is already here, which is yet to be challenged by the court. Trump administration officials also began revoking parole for immigrants entering the app.

On Tuesday, Aram Moghaddassi, a software engineer working at Doge, sent Mr Dudek the first batch of names to add: more than 6,300 immigrants homeland security officials have been identified as temporary legal status, but they are now described as “terror watch list” or are labeled as “FBI criminal records”, all of which are labeled as “fbi criminal records.” Mr Moghaddassi wrote that on the same day, people’s parole status had been revoked.

The list includes a 13-year-old and seven other minors who raised too widespread fears within the agency, and according to a familiar list, he spoke on anonymously to discuss sensitive information.

Nearly 1,000 immigrants received federal benefits worth about $600,000, and then, before parole was cut off, including Medicaid, unemployment insurance and federal student loans, an average of $600 per person.

Mr Moghaddassi did not respond to a request for comment.

Although the agency has renamed the death list to a “failed master file,” it has not developed a new way to mark people as ineligible for benefits, according to documents reviewed by the Times. According to two people familiar with the process, immigrants are currently being given what are called death dates.

Mr Biden’s Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley described the strategy as inhumane.

“It’s about economic murder,” O’Malley said.

Andrew Biggs, who served at the agency during the George W. Bush administration, suggested that the change would help develop Mr. Trump’s immigration policy.

“If you favor immigration enforcement, it makes sense,” he said.

Trump administration officials have proposed the change as a way to combat crime.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote in a memo to Mr Dudek that the plan would “prevent terrorists suspected of illegal here” from gaining “privileges reserved for those with legal status”.

She didn’t say how the government determined whether someone was a “suspected terrorist.”

Death list

The Social Security Agency’s death list is one of its most important data sets. Officials maintain it by collecting death records from state health records, funeral homes and family members, adding about 3 million new death reports each year. This prevents mispayment.

Officials also share the information with other federal agencies to ensure that those who die are no longer receiving benefits. The Ministry of Commerce sold versions of the list to banks, credit bureaus and other financial institutions that wanted to avoid using stolen social insurance numbers to operate accounts.

Those who were mistakenly listed while still alive reported catastrophic effects, such as canceling their homes and canceling their bank accounts. In order to be removed, they have to go to the on-site office to try to prove their identity, a process called “resurrection.” But even then, the problem can take months to resolve or longer.

According to former officials and agency experts, reusing death lists and agents sharing addresses with agencies that share addresses with immigration authorities may be challenged under federal tax and privacy laws based on the maintenance of former officials and agency experts.

“The Social Security Bureau has a legal obligation to retain accurate data to manage its programs and strictly manage and exchange that data,” said Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and Disability Policy, the center for Budget and Policy Priority for the Left Think Tank.

Trump officials said they hope to modernize the country’s deportation system by combining a set of data held by different agencies that have long been isolated, as part of a broader effort to connect public data about the public that is spread in government.

Documents reviewed by The Times show that Dooger played an important role in the process, including in the agreement to share addresses, which took place in February.

Under the terms of the arrangement, immigration officials agreed to send thousands of Social Security numbers to the Social Security Agency, which would match them with their personal data and send them back to the relevant address.

ICE collects as much information as possible to target, monitor and detain undocumented immigrants, although the addresses in their records can sometimes be outdated.

Documents show Mr. Dudeck allowed Doge engineers and ICE leaders to use their agent’s data to enforce the law. Michael Russo, a member of the Social Security Agency’s then-chair information officer and Musk’s team, also asked for the information to be sent to the DHS urgently.

Neither organization will confirm whether the data has been sent.

Social Security regulations state that the agency can disclose information for law enforcement purposes in certain circumstances, including a person being prosecuted or convicted of a “violent crime” and investigating rights fraud. In the first Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security, which is in charge of ICE, has also promoted widespread access to social security data, but has been denied based on privacy concerns, according to two people familiar with the negotiations.

Among the campaign agreements involving the data sharing protocol, Akash Bobba, a recent college graduate, received access to the Social Security System in early February, according to court records. Scott Coulter was appointed chief information officer for social security last month; Marko Elez, an engineer, resigned from a government position earlier this year after being linked to a racist post that promoted eugenics-based immigration policy.

Mr. Ellers quietly rehired after Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance called for him to be brought back to the Governor.

Kate Conger,,,,, Andrew Duehren and Miriam Jordan Contribution report. Sheelagh McNeill Contributed to the research.