Social Security to put illegal immigrants on ‘dead list’ in effort to encourage self-deporting

Published April 11, 2025 4:03pm ET



The Trump administration is cracking down on illegal immigration through various actions across federal agencies, including a new move by the Social Security Administration to label illegal immigrants as dead.

More than 6,000 Social Security numbers for illegal immigrants the administration claims have a criminal record or ties to terrorism have been moved to the “death master file,” according to a report from the New York Times. The massive file holds the Social Security numbers of dead people to avoid giving out their benefits and block their information from being used fraudulently.

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