Trump officials planned to mark 2.7 million living people as dead, whistleblower says

The Trump administration had plans to classify 2.7 million living people — including some U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents — as dead as part of its immigration enforcement efforts, according to a former senior Social Security executive.

The previously unreported plan, which the Social Security Administration said was not carried out, would have used one of the government’s most consequential identity databases to effectively erase people from the financial system, potentially cutting them off from wages, banking, government benefits and other services.

Jeremiah Schofield, who worked at Social Security for 25 years and helped lead the agency’s IT modernization efforts before leaving in October, said he refused to help implement the plan after agency lawyers warned that falsely marking living people as dead could violate federal law. Schofield said he realized the plan’s possible intent — to intimidate and worsen the finances of immigrants — as well as its potential unlawfulness after taking a sample of people from the 2.7 million and discovering they were all alive. Some were U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, teenagers and senior citizens, including one widow who was a legal permanent resident receiving survivor benefits.

Schofield has provided details on the plan in a 49-page whistleblower disclosure to the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which was reviewed by The Washington Post. The disclosure offers the most detailed account yet of how officials from Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service sought to use Social Security data in service of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

In an interview with The Post, Schofield said he is speaking publicly for the first time because he believes Americans need to understand how government data can be misused and, in some cases, already has been.

Social Security carried out a smaller version of such an effort last year, The Post previously reported, moving 6,100 immigrants into its “Death Master File” — a database used by banks, employers and government agencies to determine whether someone is alive. Some of those people later showed up at Social Security field offices to prove they were alive and were restored in agency records.

In a written statement, a Social Security spokesperson who did not provide their name said the agency “did not add a list of 2.7 million names to the Death Master File. SSA maintains the highest level of internal controls. This includes having all appropriate policies and procedures in place to maintain the integrity and accuracy of agency records.”

Schofield’s whistleblower complaint describes a tumultuous period inside Social Security, as career officials questioned the legality of such efforts and watched DOGE officials gain access to some of the government’s most sensitive databases. In one meeting, Schofield said, a DOGE official working with the Department of Homeland Security described the goal of declaring 2.7 million living people dead: making immigrants so miserable that they self-deported or went to Social Security offices for help, where they could be arrested.

“That call was one of the most disappointing calls I’ve been in in my 25-year career,” Schofield told The Post. “I was shocked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”

Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Lauren Bis did not respond to questions about the plan but said that sharing information across agencies can be beneficial and attacked the Biden administration’s immigration policies.

“Information sharing across agencies is essential to identify who is in our country, including violent criminals, determine what public safety and terror threats may exist so we can neutralize them, and identify what public benefits these aliens are using at taxpayer expense,” she said.

Being moved into the Death Master File can be devastating to someone who is still alive because it can cut off their financial access. Last year, career staff warned that falsely giving people death dates could be catastrophic, though the administration overrode those objections.

In the past year, two other whistleblowers have also shared concerns about Americans’ personal information being accessed and shared by DOGE. One whistleblower, former Social Security chief data officer Charles Borges, alleged DOGE members shared data through third-party services and placed Americans’ personal information on a cloud. A second whistleblower anonymously claimed in disclosures to the inspector general that a DOGE member allegedly took a thumb drive of Americans’ data to a private company, which is being investigated by the agency’s watchdog.

When Schofield left Social Security in October, he did not expect to blow the whistle. He said he followed legal requirements to destroy documents in his possession. He had told family and other co-workers about the call when it happened but had otherwise kept quiet as he watched other civil service workers facing retaliation in the Trump administration.

But months later, at a February happy hour, he told another former federal worker he was haunted by what he had seen and how Social Security data had been compromised, and she encouraged him to speak out.

He said he asked others if they would speak out with him and confirm his account on the record but none would. One other person contributed anonymously to the whistleblower complaint to the Senate, but The Post was not able to confirm that person’s identity.

“I don’t think that it’s right that they do this to us, and I think that we need to stand up for each other in this time,” Schofield said.