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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 Joseph R. Biden Jr.
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 identity that allows them to make and spend money.
The initial names are limited to people the administration says are convicted criminals and “suspected terrorists,” the documents show. But officials said the effort could broaden to include others in the country without authorization.
Their “financial lives,” the Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner, Leland Dudek, wrote in an email to staff, would be “terminated.”
