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The Trump administration is reportedly canceling the Social Security numbers of immigrants who came to the U.S. legally and adding their identities to a closely guarded Social Security database tracking deaths.
The move, treating the individuals as if they had literally died in the eyes of the government, is the latest in the administration’s larger campaign to revoke the status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who got temporary authorization to remain in the U.S. under the Biden administration.
In recent weeks, the administration has pulled the status of hundreds of thousands of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who were granted temporary legal status, while stripping protections from potentially around one million people who entered the U.S. legally using a Border Patrol app while they awaited asylum claims.
The Social Security effort, reportedly initiated at the request of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, has a goal of making sure the “financial lives” of the targeted immigrants are “terminated,” Social Security Administration acting commission Leland Dudek said in an email obtained by The New York Times.
Lacking a Social Security number makes it largely impossible to access government programs and use mainstream financial institutions.
The White House largely confirmed the effort, with a spokesperson telling the Times, “President Trump promised mass deportations, and by removing the monetary incentive for illegal aliens to come and stay, we will encourage them to self-deport.”
So far, the effort has added about 6,000 people to the death database, beginning with those with criminal convictions or suspected terror ties, though the effort reportedly could expand to a much greater scale and include those with lesser or no convictions.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, which has been involved in efforts to probe the operations of Social Security, has reportedly been integral to the immigration enforcement program.
“If you want to know what DOGE is doing at Social Security, this is it,” a White House official told The Washington Post.
The agency has long been a target of Musk, who has alleged that Democrats intentionally offered non-citizens Social Security numbers to shift the demographics of the country and seize political influence.
Past administrations have closely guarded Social Security data and avoided entangling it in immigration enforcement.
The Trump administration has sought to integrate immigration enforcement across a variety of agencies, prompting controversy.
This week, the acting chief of the Internal Revenue Service is resigning from the role after the administration reached a similar deal for the agency to share undocumented immigrants’ taxpayer data with the Department of Homeland Security.
