Social Security Data Is Openly Being Shared With DHS to Target Immigrants

Last week, the Social Security Administration (SSA) softly updated a nationalist announcement to uncover that the bureau would beryllium sharing “citizenship and migration information” with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This information sharing was already happening: WIRED reported successful April that the Trump medication had already started pooling delicate information from crossed the authorities for the intent of migration enforcement.

This nationalist announcement issued by SSA makes that official, months aft the fact. The announcement is known arsenic a strategy of grounds announcement (SORN), a papers that outlines however an bureau volition stock the information it has, with whom, and for what purpose. This announcement is required nether the Privacy Act of 1974. Normally, SORNs are issued earlier immoderate information is shared betwixt agencies, giving the nationalist and authorities officials capable clip to connection comment. But WIRED recovered that the alleged Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was pulling successful information from crossed DHS, SSA, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and authorities elector data, among different sources, based mostly connected the US Citizenship and Immigration Service’s (USCIS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database.

“There are laws that necessitate the authorities to pass the nationalist astir their usage of assorted kinds of databases and different surveillance technologies,” says Adam Schwartz, privateness litigation manager astatine the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focused connected integer privateness and escaped speech. “If the authorities starts utilizing the database and does not enactment retired the due disclosure and past aboriginal does enactment retired that due disclosure, they inactive person violated the law.”

The Trump medication has gone to drastic lengths to remake the authorities successful its image. A halfway constituent of this has been an effort to vacuum up ample swathes of information from crossed national agencies, galore of which were ne'er meant to beryllium comingled. This has often happened careless of the laws, norms, oregon procedures that usually govern the entree and sharing of delicate data. The SORN from SSA is conscionable the latest confirmation of precisely however overmuch information is being shared successful ways experts archer WIRED is “unprecedented.”

Much of this information sharing begins with misinformation astir the information astatine hand. In the aboriginal days of the Trump administration, Elon Musk seized connected a misunderstanding of SSA’s information to dispersed the assertion that 150-year-old radical were receiving benefits. They weren’t, but DOGE capitalized connected the thought that the SSA’s systems were inefficient and fraudulent to burrow into the agency’s information and exertion systems. In April, reporting from The New York Times recovered that successful an effort to unit immigrants to self-deport, the medication was adding them to the SSA’s database of dormant people, efficaciously meaning that their Social Security numbers could not beryllium utilized to get jobs oregon entree authorities services. As portion of the effort to harvester disparate information crossed the authorities to verify citizenship and surveil immigrants, DHS precocious published a antithetic but related SORN that efficaciously transforms SAVE into a elector verification system, which experts besides warned could beryllium bypassing the requirements of the Privacy Act.

Leland Dudek, who served arsenic acting commissioner for the Social Security Administration betwixt February and May 2025, led the bureau erstwhile members of DOGE archetypal appeared. Dudek says helium was initially supportive of DOGE and acted arsenic a span betwixt SSA unit and members of the DOGE squad earlier becoming disillusioned.