In its efforts to force immigrants to self-deport by taking away their ability to work legally in the United States, the Trump administration moved more than 6,000 living immigrants to the Social Security Administration (SSA)'s Death Master File (DMF). But it's not just immigrants who were targeted as a result.
The Daily Beast reported Thursday that a significantly larger number of American citizens were incorrectly added to the DMF following DOGE input into the SSA’s databases. The DOGE officials who made these changes mistakenly concluded that “countless” individuals recorded as 120 years old and older were receiving benefits.
This means that in addition to the 6,000 living immigrants that the Trump administration added to the SSA Death Master File, there are also American citizens who were incorrectly declared deceased.
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"What might be called Day of the Dead Living is being continually played out at a Social Security Administration (SSA) office in upstate New York, and likely across the country," the Beast report said.
“[DOGE staffers] went into the system and they killed off people,” Rennie Glasgow, a claims technical analyst who has worked with the agency for 15 years, told the Daily Beast.
“About 4 million people, they marked them as dead. But they’re not sure if those people were supposed to be marked as dead, so they’re sending us an email saying, ‘If these people come into the office with their identification, you can reinstate them.," he added.
He further said, “So we’re going to be resurrecting a lot of dead people.”
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Glasgow said people who did not receive benefits are coming in every day with their ID. ‘I’m not dead, I’m alive!” they tell the officials, according to Glasgow.
The SSA staffer said "resurrecting" people mistakenly declared dead can take about three to four days
“When they mark someone dead on the Social Security record, it stops their life,” Glasgow told the Beast. “It stops their car payments, it stops their credit, it stops their ability to do anything. Their identification gets flagged. And most times those things have to go to the payment center," he continued.
Earlier this month, the Guardian reported that office closures, staffing and service cuts and policy changes at the SSA have led to “complete, utter chaos." Workers at the agency think these steps may send the agency into a “death spiral."
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According to a Wired report, the DOGE team plans to transfer all social security data and overhaul the code within a few months, which may lead to system failures and additional outages.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who heads DOGE, has referred to social security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time." He has repeatedly promoted misleading statements and conspiracy theories regarding the program.
In a recent appearance on Senator Ted Cruz’s podcast, Musk amplified a white supremacist conspiracy theory suggesting that Democrats utilize entitlements to “attract and retain” undocumented immigrants as voters.
These claims are dubious. Last year, the incidence of fraud related to social security direct deposits was 0.00625 percent, and fewer than 1 percent of social security payments were identified as incorrect.
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AlterNet reached out to DOGE for comment.