The Trump administration is reportedly adding thousands of living people who previously had temporary legal status in the US to a list of dead people maintained by the Social Security Administration, The New York Times reports.
In adding them to the so-called “death master file,” the administration is treating these people, whose legal immigration status the Trump administration revoked, as if they’re dead, invalidating the social security numbers they use to work and live. As acting secretary of the SSA, Lee Dudek, put it in an email to staff, according to the Times, their “financial lives” are effectively “terminated.”
Already 6,300 names have been added to the list, according to the Times. The administration says these people are either criminals or terrorists, but the rest of Trump’s slapdash, error-riddled immigration enforcement suggests disastrous mistakes are inevitable. “The potential for errors can be very consequential,” Jason Fichtner, who worked for the Social Security Administration under George W. Bush, told the Times.
In a statement to the Times, a White House spokesperson said that President Trump is “removing the monetary incentive for illegal aliens to come and stay” and that the move was meant to “encourage them to self-deport.” But, in this case, the people in question came to the country under President Biden’s parole program, which granted them temporary legal status and social security numbers that enabled them to work.
According to the Times, a software engineer working for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency sent the Social Security Administration the list of 6,300 people to be added to the death file on Tuesday—the very same day their legal status was revoked. While the engineer reportedly said all of the names were on “the terrorist watch list” or had “F.B.I. criminal records,” a source told the Times the list also included several minors, including one as young as 13.
That DOGE is heavily involved in this high-stakes effort is particularly notable, given its well-documented track record of misinterpreting data. Dudek has already had to walk back Elon Musk’s claims of 150-year-olds collecting social security benefits. “The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record,” Dudek said in February. “These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.” DOGE has also made a series of errors in reporting supposed government savings on its so-called “Wall of Receipts.”
It is one thing for DOGE to mistake an $8 million contract for an $8 billion contract (as it once did). It’s another thing entirely to mistake an innocent person for a terrorist. And as this administration has made abundantly clear, it’s not particularly interested in correcting its mistakes.
