The Trump administration is reportedly taking drastic measures to encourage immigrants to leave the United States. According to a report by the Washington Post, thousands of immigrants are being pressured to leave by being denied access to essential financial services such as bank accounts and credit cards, as well as government benefits.
At the request of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, the Social Security Administration this week added the names and Social Security numbers of more than 6,000 predominantly Latino immigrants to a database that is supposed to track deceased benefit recipients, the Washington Post reported.
The Trump administration is currently trying to revoke the residency permits of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, mostly from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti, who came to the United States under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
A White House official – who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the new program – said that all individuals who were added to the Social Security database this week had ties to terrorist activities or had prior convictions. The official did not provide any evidence for these alleged crimes or terrorist connections, but stated that some were on the FBI’s terror watchlist.
The action marks the beginning of a large-scale campaign by the Trump administration to deport potentially hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants living in the United States with a Social Security number that grants them access to Medicaid, Medicare, unemployment insurance, federal loans, or other benefits.
Another White House official said that the next group to be added to the database would be an additional 92,000 undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of any crime. The effort would then be expanded to include undocumented immigrants without convictions.
Using the Social Security database of deceased recipients as a tool for deportation is a new strategy and escalation of the aggressive campaign by the Trump administration to track down and remove undocumented immigrants.