Social Security reclassifies thousands of living immigrants as dead; cancels numbers

The Trump administration has moved to classify more than 6,000 immigrants as dead in order to cancel out their Social Security benefits in an effort to make them leave the country, sources familiar with the situation told The Associated Press.

The officials said stripping some immigrants of their Social Security numbers will cut them off from many financial services and encourage them to "self-deport" and abandon the U.S. for their birth countries.

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Taking away social security benefits from some immigrants will effectively wipe out their ability to work, and it will be much harder for those affected to use banks or other basic services where Social Security numbers are required.

It’s part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump to crack down on immigrants who were allowed to enter and remain temporarily in the United States under programs instituted by his predecessor, former President Joe Biden.

It wasn't immediately clear how the 6,000-plus immigrants were chosen. But the Trump administration has targeted people in the country temporarily under Biden-era programs, including more than 900,000 immigrants who entered the U.S. using that administration's CBP One app.

More Trump policies aimed at immigrants

On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security revoked the legal status of the immigrants who used the CBP one app.

They had generally been allowed to remain in the U.S. for two years with work authorization under presidential parole authority during the Biden era, but are now expected to self-deport.

Meanwhile, a federal judge said Thursday that she was stopping the Trump administration from ordering hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans with temporary legal status to leave the country later this month.

DHS and the Treasury Department signed a deal this week that would allow the IRS to share immigrants’ tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the purpose of identifying and deporting people illegally in the U.S. The agreement will allow ICE to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records.

What’s more, the Privacy Act allows the Social Security Administration to disclose information to law enforcement in limited circumstances, which includes when a violent crime has been committed or other criminal activity.