Pressuring migrants to ‘self-deport,’ White House moves to cancel social security numbers
WLRN Public Media | By Alexandra BerzonHamed AleazizNicholas NehamasRyan Mac and Tara Siegel Bernard | The New York Times
Published April 11, 2025 at 11:30 AM EDT
People wait outside a Social Security Administration office before it opened for the day in Glendale, Ariz., on Tuesday, April 8, 2025. The SSA said on Tuesday that people seeking retirement or survivor benefits could continue to file applications over the phone, reversing a much criticized change that was expected to force tens of thousands of Americans to visit offices in person each week.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has moved aggressively to revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were allowed into the country under President Joe Biden.
Now, the administration is taking drastic steps to pressure some of those immigrants and others who had legal status to “self-deport” by effectively canceling the Social Security numbers they had lawfully obtained, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with six people familiar with the plans.
The goal is to cut those people off from using crucial financial services like bank accounts and credit cards, along with their access to government benefits.
The effort hinges on a surprising new tactic: repurposing Social Security’s “death master file,” which for years has been used to track dead people who should no longer receive benefits, to include the names of living people who the government believes should be treated as if they are dead. As a result of being added to the death database, they would be blacklisted from a coveted form of identification that allows them to make and more easily spend money.
https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2025-04-11/self-deport-white-house-social-security-numbers
