Washington — The Trump administration’s decision to declare thousands of living immigrants dead and delete their Social Security numbers is an expansion of the president’s attack on people who were lawfully permitted to dwell in the United States under programs established by his predecessor.
The measure will make it far more difficult for impacted immigrants to access banking and other basic services that require Social Security numbers.
According to the White House, “by removing the monetary incentive for illegal aliens to come and stay, we will encourage them to self-deport.”
However, the impacted persons who have recently been added to the Social Security Administration’s “Death Master File” are legal residents of the nation. Immigrant advocates claim the administration is committing “digital murder.”
Here’s what we know about the administration’s intention to mark some immigrants as deceased in Social Security records:
Who is affected?
According to a Trump administration official, the SSA added the names and Social Security numbers of approximately 6,300 immigrants to a database used by federal officials to track the deceased after the Department of Homeland Security identified them as temporarily paroled aliens on the terrorist watch list or with FBI criminal records.
The administration has not offered proof of this claim.
The Death Master File, the most comprehensive federal database of deceased individuals, is maintained by the Social Security Administration. It has around 142 million records dating back to 1899.
The White House now refers to it as the “Ineligible Master File.”
Customs and Border Patrol canceled parole for all of these individuals on April 8, with written notification to each, according to a Trump administration official. The official was not authorized to talk publicly and only disclosed the development under the condition of anonymity.
What happens if you lose access to your Social Security number?
Without a Social Security number, you cannot legally work, collect Social Security benefits, or get some government benefits. Some school districts may refuse to enroll students who do not have a Social Security number.
And, while some banks allow customers to open accounts without providing a Social Security number, depriving immigrants of their Social Security numbers will prevent them from accessing many other financial services.
Devin O’Connor, a senior scholar at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, stated that the practice is unusual, and that persons have never been intentionally added to death registers while still alive.
“The administration is saying they have the right to declare someone as dead when they have not died — where is the oversight here?” O’Connor asked. “And what happens when they make a mistake?”
Martin O’Malley, former Social Security Administrator, told the Associated Press, “The police state is here, now.” He claimed the administration’s current approach violates privacy standards designed to protect everyone’s personal data.
How will this influence the general public?
Experts warn that targeting immigration could only be the beginning.
O’Connor stated, “The idea that you can rename the Death Master File and decide to put people on the list as persona non grata” is unprecedented and should concern everyone.
“If they can do it to one group, they can do it to anyone — in error or with malice,” Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote on the BlueSky social media app Thursday.
“A person must be (asterisk)lawfully admitted(asterisk) to the U.S. to be assigned a Social Security number,” she stated in a subsequent post.
“Don’t let the Trump administration deceive you. Their ‘digital murder’ policy does not target unauthorized immigrants. It’s about folks who arrived here legally.”
How else does the administration track down immigrants?
Earlier this week, DHS canceled the legal statuses of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who used the CBP One application. They were normally allowed to stay in the United States for two years with work authorization under presidential parole authority during the Biden administration, but they are now expected to self-deport.
In addition, DHS and the Treasury Department agreed last week to allow the IRS to share immigrants’ tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in order to identify and deport persons who are illegally present in the United States. The arrangement will allow ICE to send the identities and addresses of illegal immigrants in the United States to the IRS for cross-verification against tax data.
Melanie Krause, the acting IRS commissioner who had been in the position since February, resigned over the transaction.
Advocates argue that the Treasury-DHS information-sharing arrangement violates privacy laws and undermines the privacy of all Americans.