The Trump administration added over 6,300 names of living, mostly Latino immigrants to the Social Security Administration's "Death Master File" on Thursday.
The move is aimed at immigrants who were issued valid Social Security numbers but have since lost legal status in the United States, according to reports from The New York Times.
The database—used to track deceased individuals—effectively cuts off those listed from accessing essential public services. Many of the living persons added entered the country under former President Joe Biden's temporary work programs. Being labeled as deceased means immediate termination of benefits such as Medicaid, Medicare, unemployment insurance, federal loans and more.
"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," White House spokesperson Elizabeth Huston said.
The administration's next step, according to a senior White House official, will be to target 92,000 undocumented immigrants with criminal convictions, also placing them in the death database.
The controversial program is part of a broader push for deportation spearheaded by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem and Elon Musk, who has taken a key role in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk, who recently said Social Security is "a Ponzi scheme," has repeatedly asserted that the program is plagued by abuse from undocumented immigrants. Despite a lack of evidence supporting those claims, Musk has vowed to end the alleged fraud through aggressive reforms.
Two memorandums signed earlier this week by Noem and acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek authorized the current initiative. The administration also signed a new agreement with the IRS to access tax data on undocumented immigrants and received a database of 800,000 individuals with final deportation orders from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Listing living people as dead not only makes them unidentifiable by Social Security, it can also cause the Commerce Department to change their status to dead—severing relationships between those listed and banks, mortgage companies and employers. From the 6,300 listed, 1,000 receive Medicaid benefits, 41 collect unemployment insurance and 22 are student loan recipients, according to a White House official who spoke with The Washington Post.
No information in the "Death Master File," which has now been renamed the "Ineligible Master File," distinguishes between the actually deceased and those whose legal status has been revoked.
The Social Security Administration has not provided comment.
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