The Trump administration has added over 6,000 undocumented immigrants to the Social Security Administration’s “death file,” effectively cutting off their access to work, housing, and federal benefits, according to U.S. media reports on Thursday.
The Washington Post, citing a White House official, reported that the move is intended to pressure undocumented immigrants to leave the United States by rendering their Social Security Numbers (SSNs) unusable. Once a person is marked as deceased in the system, their SSN is flagged, making it nearly impossible to pass background checks for employment, rent apartments, open bank accounts, or access government services.
This latest action fits into a broader pattern of hardline immigration measures since Donald Trump began his second term, including the controversial transfer of over 200 suspected gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
Though hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants possess valid SSNs—many of them having arrived under temporary entry policies from the Biden era—the Trump administration is now leveraging these identifiers to restrict access to the U.S. labor market.
According to the New York Times, the first group of 6,300 names added to the “death file” reportedly includes individuals labeled as “convicted criminals and suspected terrorists.” However, both the Times and the Post note that the policy may soon be expanded to target a much broader group of undocumented migrants.
The move was reportedly spearheaded by staff from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an agency created to streamline federal operations but increasingly involved in controversial enforcement efforts.
This tactic comes just days after the administration announced it would begin sharing taxpayer information from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with immigration authorities—a significant shift that critics argue undermines long-standing norms and trust in the tax system.
Millions of undocumented immigrants have paid taxes for years, contributing to federal programs like Social Security in hopes of strengthening their cases for legal status and helping fund the very benefits they are now being denied access to.
