MSNBC's Rachel Maddow expressed skepticism on her show late Monday at a new report that Trump administration added thousands of migrants to the Social Security Administration's death file — even though they are alive — alleging they all have links to either terrorist activity or criminal records.
The Trump administration directed the agency to add more than 6,000 living immigrants to its "death master file," a database of people who have died and whose Social Security numbers should no longer be used. The move was meant to pressure the immigrants, many of whom were legally allowed into the country under temporary programs established by the Biden administration, into self-deporting from the United States.
By adding their names to the database, their Social Security numbers were invalidated, effectively cutting them off from various financial services, legal employment, and government benefits.
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"You can lose basically everything, almost instantly," noted Maddow. "Your health insurance, your home, your bank account, your job, your credit card, even your phone. Everything."
Maddow emphasized, "they're imposing on them a civil and financial death."
Maddow read from a Washington Post report from over the weekend in which the White House insisted, providing no evidence, the migrants affected were identified by the Department of Homeland Security as having criminal records or being on the terrorist watch list.
"Do they?" she retorted. "The records the Post reviewed showed those more than 6,000 people included a 13-year-old! A 14-year-old, and two 16-year-olds, as well as one person in their 80s and a handful in their 70s. They're all terrorists? Even the 13-year-old? All those people now legally dead, according to Social Security."
Maddow noted that one Washington Post source warned the Trump administration could "do this to anyone."
"'Anybody granted the appropriate permissions within Social Security could mark someone as dead without having to prove their demise in any way,'" she said, reading from the report. "'Employees' fear was partly that a bad actor who gained access to government credentials could label groups of living individuals as dead to target them for punishment.'"
Employees raised the alarm that the Trump administration "might try to use the database to go after people the president dislikes."
To boot, one source told the Post, that concern is the concern "about this misuse of the Death Master File is so high that the General Counsel’s office inside Social Security is, quote: 'Preparing an opinion that will find the Trump administration’s unprecedented use of the death database to be a violation of privacy law.'"
"In other words: to be illegal," she emphasized, adding: "Obviously, if the General Counsel of the administration did that, that might be a big deal."
