Donald Trump’s second term has taken a drastic turn in its handling of immigration, and this time, even legal residents aren’t being spared.
After revoking student visas of individuals participating in pro-Palestine protests on college campuses, the administration is now targeting immigrants’ Social Security numbers (SSNs), a move that could severely affect their ability to work, bank, or live securely in the U.S.
According to a report from The New York Times, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has been instructed to place thousands of living immigrants into its “Death Master File,” a list that marks individuals as deceased.
This effectively removes them from federal systems and cancels their SSNs. The SSA’s acting commissioner, Leland Dudek, reportedly told staff that this step would “terminate their financial lives.”
So far, around 6,000 mostly Latino immigrants have already been falsely declared dead, a number driven by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s request.
This is only part of a much larger pattern. The SSA has also reportedly agreed to share the last known addresses of 98,000 individuals with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
These people are supposedly being flagged as “suspected terrorists” or criminals. However, recent deportation cases suggest that many have no criminal background.
As seen with Trump’s mass deportation initiative that sent migrants to a prison in El Salvador, 90% of those detained had no criminal record at all.
Some were targeted for vague reasons like tattoos or clothing. One man was even deported due to what officials later admitted was an “administrative error.” The Supreme Court unanimously ordered his release, highlighting the dangers of such a system.
These kinds of errors are likely to multiply as more people are wrongly erased from federal records — mistakes that could destroy lives.
Meanwhile, more federal agencies are being drawn into Trump’s immigration crackdown. Several top officials at the IRS resigned recently after the agency began turning over tax records to help the administration identify immigrants for deportation.
And then there’s Elon Musk. Through his role in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk is reportedly using federal IT systems to gather and analyze sensitive personal data using AI.
But critics argue that this system is far from reliable. Musk has publicly slammed the Social Security program as a “Ponzi scheme” and falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants are receiving benefits, even though there’s no evidence to support this.
Interestingly, the automatic assignment of Social Security numbers to legal immigrants — known as the Enumeration Beyond Entry (EBE) program — began during Trump’s first term in 2017.
It allows work-authorized immigrants to get an SSN without needing to visit an SSA office. It doesn’t give them access to benefits — it just lets them legally work and pay taxes.
Despite this, the current administration has frozen the EBE program, forcing even legally recognized immigrants and new citizens to visit understaffed and overwhelmed SSA offices to apply for cards.
But the situation may go beyond just immigrants. Reports indicate that DOGE is collecting data on hundreds of millions of Americans, possibly in violation of the Privacy Act of 1974.
Originally passed after the Watergate scandal to protect citizens from government surveillance, the law prohibits federal officials from misusing personal data.
Now, with Trump openly calling for “retribution” against his critics, federal employees fear that their emails and messages are being monitored as part of a political purge.
At its core, this campaign reveals just how much power the federal government can wield — and how quickly it can be weaponized against groups of people with little explanation or accountability.
The Social Security Administration, once a trusted institution aimed at helping the elderly and disabled avoid poverty, is now being used to erase people from public life — sometimes literally.
This isn’t just a policy shift. It’s a warning about how vulnerable even legally protected rights can become under a government willing to bend institutions to meet its agenda.
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