The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) requested that the Social Security Administration (SSA) insert more than 6,000 names of immigrants into its database of deceased persons.
The measure aims to financially harm immigrants, preventing them from working legally in the country, receiving various government benefits, and accessing financial services such as credit and bank accounts. The Trump administration hopes this will lead them to self-deport. All this is part of the government’s efforts to crack down on immigration in the country.
The measure, first reported by The New York Times, targets immigrants who have Social Security numbers and may have entered the United States through temporary work programs from the Biden administration.
A White House official told CNN that the immigrants in question are temporarily on parole on the monitored terrorists list or have FBI criminal records and are ineligible to receive Social Security benefits. But the official provided no additional evidence to support this claim.
“Under the leadership of President Trump, the administration is finally doing what it should have done all along: sharing information across the entire federal government to solve problems,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement to CNN.
“Sharing information between agencies is essential to identify who is in our country, including violent criminals, determine what public safety and terrorism threats may exist, remove these individuals from voter rolls, and identify which public benefits these foreigners are using at taxpayer expense.”
The announcement drew sharp criticism from former SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley, who served in the administration of former President Joe Biden.
“If they can, against the law and all regulations and without any due process, mark as dead people in the SSA database who entered the country legally and were legally required to receive an SSA work number, then they can do this to anyone,” O’Malley told CNN.
White House spokesperson Liz Huston said in a statement: “President Trump promised mass deportations and, by removing the financial incentive for illegal immigrants to come and stay, we will encourage them to self-deport. He is fulfilling the promise he made to the American people.”
Immigrants receive Social Security numbers when they are authorized to work legally in the US. These numbers are crucial for them to get jobs.
However, the agency has recently made it harder for immigrants to obtain numbers, requiring them to go to local offices to get the documents, instead of applying through the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Source: CNN