From the New York Times:
Since taking office, the Trump administration has moved to revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were allowed into the country under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Now, the administration is taking drastic steps to pressure some of those immigrants and others who had legal status to “self-deport” by effectively canceling the Social Security numbers they had lawfully obtained, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with six people familiar with the plans.
The goal is to cut those people off from using crucial financial services like bank accounts and credit cards, along with their access to government benefits.
The effort hinges on a surprising new tactic: repurposing Social Security’s “death master file,” which for years has been used to track dead people who should no longer receive benefits, to include the names of living people who the government believes should be treated as if they are dead. As a result of being added to the death database, they would be blacklisted from a coveted form of identity that allows them to make and spend money. …
Lee you are a ghoul
ReplyDeleteApologies to ghouls.
DeleteWhatever existence Leland has left will be miserable, just as sure as the incontinent/incompetent President is facilitating insider trading.
ReplyDeleteSpecialized support experience means specialized salaries no matter within or outside of the government. Dudek ought to know since he was a high-paid Management Analyst promoted to a job that far exceeded his experiences or expertise. He was only a greeter for 2 weeks at a FO - his only field experience ever.
ReplyDeleteThat’s the thing. This administration *will* keep expanding.
ReplyDeleteDue process— the coveted fundamental American right—is dead.
The authoritarian play book has been highly effective, and will continue to be given the buy-in or complicity of the population. We are past the point of return.
It’s so heartbreaking how privileged we are in this nation. The bulk of Americans continue to happily go about their lives, oblivious, be cause we have enough comforts to do so. Much easier to play video games and make TikTok videos than to wade through the litany of media to discern truth, and to activate. I’m not innocent. But I have spent the last few months doing all I can to educate despite risk of my job.
I failed. So has everyone else who has tried.
It will all get much, much worse. Until an average citizen feels enough discomfort to care, it will not get better.
I apologize for being dark. I covet this blog and read it daily. I’m a dedicated SSA employee of more than 15 years and I’m now grieving both my career (which I loved and which I thought contributed to the good of society) and my nation.
Cheer up! Signs are pointing upward since Leland and DOGE are back pedaling more each day. Seniors and the press are finally waking up to what is going on in this agency. You are not alone.
DeleteIt's sickening that they are abusing SSA's resources to harass targeted demographics and drive them out of the country. And it's not just happening to this agency but to others like the IRS, where data is being repurposed and weaponized similarly. These people have no moral compass.
ReplyDeleteThis is an excellent plan. Those people, who are not citizens, should not be spending our tax money.
ReplyDeleteThey‘re mostly not receiving any taxpayer money, and contribute far more than is spent on them. And the assumption they‘ll “self deport” just because we took away their ability to pay their taxes is one of the dumbest a government official has ever come up with.
DeleteMy understanding was if they self deposit they may be able to legally immigrate some time vs not self deporting would mean a permanent ban.
DeletePeople here illegally send their kids to school and use hospitals and doctors when needed. Some pay for that but unlikely they pay their share.
Allowing people to come here and giving them SSNs because they may otherwise come here illegally made no sense at all. If that is the policy being reversed, great.
ReplyDeleteThey get SSNs to allow them to work. When they work THEY'RE PAYING TAXES INTO THE SYSTEM, not taking them out.
DeleteIf they get marked as dead in the DMF, that not only keeps them from paying taxes but will freeze any financial accounts, like credit cards or checking accounts.
The commenter didn't actually believe that propaganda, it's just pretext for their xenophobia. They can drop the charade now, it's old.
DeleteSo now we can see how allowing the DOGE clowns into accessing the database can be turned to political ends. There is no bottom to these clowns.
ReplyDeleteWhere will these individual get the funds to self deport once all their assets are frozen due to their 'death'? What will happen to any financial assets they have in the US? Will they be barred from accessing them?
ReplyDeleteBut will we keep earnings/money sent in on thise numbers?
ReplyDeleteThe not so secret notion is that contributions to Social Security by immigrants, and even more so by illegal immigrants, is an incredible benefit to Social Security. At the last NOSSCR Conference Chief Actuary Goss provided a variety of charts showing just how much immigration contributes.
DeleteAnd what about the billions of dollars they send out of this county in the form of remittances? Money that leaves this economy and gores into other countries. What about the billions spent to provide them with medical treatment via ER visits? To educate their children? The jobs that are given to them instead of teens and seniors? That offsets all the things they “contribute”.
Delete11:25 - it's their money to send. Immigrant or not, they worked for it. They exchanged the labor and productivity they provided to the USA for currency - at rock bottom rates.
DeleteThis BS *what aboutism* is so effing old and worn out. Jesus, if you knew a damn thing about history, you'd know MAGA, especially the anti-immigrant part, is nothing new - just warmed up crap from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
You know, if any of these people suffer financial losses due to this (such, as identity theft resulting from the false death report, loss of property, loss of bank accounts, etc), wouldn't they have grounds to sue the US government for damages (maybe a class action lawsuit)?
ReplyDeleteAnd, wouldn't the people that actually ordered this done have personal liability for such damages as well given falsely reporting deaths is outside the scope of their assigned duties?
What happens to the illegal aliens who have worked with these dead people ssn’s and have filed tax returns with irs issued tin numbers and then come to us once they have legal status either as employment authorized or permanent resident aliens and we then issue them a ssn and then they come back with those same tax returns so we can remove suspense earnings and credit their ssn? Is that ending ?
ReplyDeleteYou cannot do that. SSA cannot move fraudulent earnings to their SSN they may have now obtained.
Delete@3:06 You have it backwards. Undocumented immigrants pay $96.7 billion dollars in taxes each year. I bet you can't wait to make up for that revenue loss in your taxes when they are deported!
ReplyDeletehttps://itep.org/undocumented-immigrants-taxes-2024/
I doubt they care one whit whether any money is actually being spent on them, and is just thrilled that some brown folks and other people who don’t look like him are being thrown out. Isn’t that the whole reason for this, really?
DeleteHey Elon! Quick come look! We’ve finally found verifiable mass fraud at SSA. Some criminals are falsifying SSA records to show that 6,000 people are dead when they know they are not.
ReplyDeleteSo much this!
DeleteI'm pretty conservative on immigration, but this plan to list them as dead, is both immoral and dishonest. I'm surprised the Trump Administration is pushing this.
ReplyDeleteSSA should not be used like this. If someone is alive , they should never be falsely and intentionally shown as deceased on SSA's master file.
Believe it. The order came directly from the fat orange guy himself.
ReplyDeleteSSA becoming The SS…
ReplyDeleteTrying to get around the 1974 privacy act that doesn’t allow for the cancelling of an ssn. Put it on the pile…
ReplyDeleteIf I as a citizen deliberately report false information to the government, it's likely a crime, depending on circumstance. But here the government is deliberately putting erroneous information into a database knowing it will cause financial harm to those "named" and apparently it's OK? Are they covered by sovereign immunity in causing such harms? If I did it, I'd be liable? If not, I know a bunch of people I'd list as deceased....
ReplyDeleteNot all foreign-born people that enter the U.S. are eligible to get a SSN. If they are eligible for an SSN, then they are given an SSN. Showing those that have SSNs and are Latino as being deceased is WRONG...SO VERY WRONG. That is waste, fraud, and abuse done by Trump, Elon and the DOGE minions. STOP dismantling all of the federal agencies. Ask pointed questions as to what the agencies actually do and how they work. One of these days, someone those above know, are related to or are close and dear to, will need some of the agencies being dismantled. Money has always been the root of all evil and that still applies today.
ReplyDeleteThe guy who swore he wouldn't touch Social Security has presided over gutting SSA's workforce, endangered the integrity of vital agency systems and services, and instructed his minions to falsely declare thousands of people who he doesn't like as dead on SSA records. That's not just touching Social Security. That's beating on it like ICE agent at a church door.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/12/trump-immigrants-dead-social-security/
ReplyDeleteWhen Massachusetts resident Nicole Micheroni received an email on Friday from the federal government telling her to leave the country, she was baffled.
ReplyDelete“At first I thought it was for a client, but I looked really closely and the only name on the email was mine,” said Micheroni. “So it said my parole status had been terminated and I should leave the country within seven days.”
But the 40-year-old is a U.S. citizen, born in Newton and raised in Sharon.
“Probably, hopefully, sent to me in error,” she said. “But it’s a little concerning these are going out to U.S. citizens.”
Micheroni is also an immigration attorney, working with many clients facing possible deportation issues, so her name and email are on a lot of paperwork.
“The language in the email is very threatening,” she said. “And it looks kind of like a sketchy spam email. It doesn’t look like an official government notice, but it is.”