DOGE Is Collecting Federal Data to Remove Immigrants From Housing, Jobs

The Trump administration is using personal data normally protected from dissemination to find undocumented immigrants where they work, study and live, often with the goal of removing them from their housing and the workforce.

At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, for example, officials are working on a rule that would ban mixed-status households — in which some family members have legal status and others don’t — from public housing, according to multiple staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution. Affiliates from the U.S. DOGE Service are also looking to kick out existing mixed-status households, vowing to ensure that undocumented immigrants do not benefit from public programs, even if they live with citizens or other eligible family members.

The push extends across agencies: Last week, the Social Security Administration entered the names and Social Security numbers of more than 6,000 mostly Latino immigrants into a database it uses to track dead people, effectively slashing their ability to receive benefits or work legally in the United States. Federal tax and immigration enforcement officials recently reached a deal to share confidential tax data for people suspected of being in the United States illegally.

The result is an unprecedented effort to use government data to support the administration’s immigration policies. That includes information people have reported about themselves for years while paying taxes or applying for housing — believing that information would not be used against them for immigration purposes. Legal experts say the data sharing is a breach of privacy rules that help ensure trust in government programs and services.

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President Donald Trump campaigned on promises of the most deportations in U.S. history and has moved forcefully since his inauguration to pursue that goal, including reopening family detention centers, moving migrants to the former prison for terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to expel alleged gang members without a hearing. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem has also moved to rescind temporary protected status for Venezuelans and pare back protections for Haitian migrants.

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{snip}DHS had already asked the Social Security Administration for help with immigration enforcement and tracking down fraudulent use of Social Security numbers, according to a government official briefed on the matter. At the IRS, officials agreed this month to share data with DHS, which indicated it might seek to use tax information to find as many as 7 million people suspected of being in the country illegally, The Post has reported. The acting IRS commissioner resigned after the deal was signed.

Other federal employees have raised concerns that DOGE officials are bulldozing through guardrails meant to keep information accessible to only a small number of people and used only for specific purposes. That includes information people reported months ago, not knowing how it would eventually be used.

The push to link agency data with the White House’s policy goals comes from the top. Last month, Trump signed an executive order to eliminate “information silos.” The order said the move would boost the government’s “ability to detect overpayments and fraud.”

At HUD, Secretary Scott Turner announced an agreement in March to facilitate data sharing with DHS and ensure that taxpayer funds “are not used to harbor or benefit illegal aliens.” Turner told Fox News Digital that “those that are here illegally, that are living in HUD-funded public housing, we’re putting on notice.” He has said there are 24,000 “ineligible” people in HUD-assisted housing.

HUD knows which households include undocumented people because all applicants are required to report their status when seeking assistance. Undocumented immigrants are prorated out of the amount of assistance households receive but have been allowed to live in public housing for years. An undocumented grandparent or parent sometimes lives in public housing with other eligible family members.

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At Social Security, DOGE representatives have spent the past month seeking access to data and asking questions that would allow them to ascertain people’s citizenship status, according to two staffers with direct knowledge of DOGE’s activities who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The team gained increasing access to claimants’ full names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, mailing addresses, contact information, bank details and more.

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