Immigrants prove they are alive, forcing Social Security to undo death label [View all]
Source: Washington Post
April 18, 2025 at 12:43 p.m. EDT
Immigrants falsely labeled dead by the Social Security Administration are showing up at field offices with documents proving they are alive, leading staff to reinstate nearly three dozen people over the past week, according to records obtained by The Washington Post.
The immigrants who have requested a reversal and been reinstated in Social Security databases include a Haitian asylum seeker and a minor child, the records show. Some immigrants have shown up with driver’s licenses and work permits to prove their legitimacy, the records show. Others have arrived bearing letters of notification that they received from their states declaring them dead.
The reversals come after the Department of Homeland Security and Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service pushed to incorrectly label roughly 6,100 mostly Latino immigrants as dead in a bid to pressure the immigrants to leave the country. The administration overrode the objections of senior Social Security staff to labeling the immigrants as dead — a move that current and former top officials at the agency warned was illegal because it violates privacy laws and involves the purposeful falsification of government records. The White House and Social Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
The request to label immigrants dead came from the very top of Homeland Security, The Washington Post previously reported. Secretary Kristi L. Noem signed two memorandums of agreement this month with acting Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek authorizing and facilitating the placement of the immigrants in Social Security’s Death Master File.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/18/immigrants-dead-social-security-alive/
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