President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency pushed to declare nearly 3 million living people dead as part of an effort to drive illegal immigrants out of the country, according to a new report.
The plan, which officials say never went into effect, would have placed scores of people — including some U.S. citizens — into the Social Security Administration’s “Death Master File,” effectively deleting them from the American financial system, jeopardizing their ability to access wages, benefits and banking services.
Jeremiah Schofield, a longtime Social Security employee who left his job last year, disclosed details of the alleged plan in a lengthy whistleblower report filed with two Senate committees, The Washington Post reported.
Schofield claimed that a DOGE official partnering with the Department of Homeland Security outlined the goal of classifying 2.7 million living people as deceased: making immigrants “so miserable” that they would voluntarily leave the U.S. or travel to government offices for assistance, where they could be detained and deported.
“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.”
Administration officials pushed back against Schofield’s claims.
An SSA spokesperson told The Independent that the agency, based in Maryland, “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.”
A DHS representative didn’t answer queries about the plan, but told the Post: “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.”
The Independent has reached out to DHS for comment.
Schofield, who helped SSA modernize its IT infrastructure, is now speaking out for the first time. In an interview with the Post, he said that Americans must come to grips with how their data can be used inappropriately.
Trump created DOGE on his first day back in office in order to maximize government productivity and efficiency. He tapped Elon Musk, one of his biggest donors, to spearhead the effort. The SpaceX and Tesla CEO ultimately facilitated thousands of layoffs and budget cuts across dozens of agencies before departing as a special government employee in May 2025. Soon after, he and Trump had an explosive falling out.
DOGE officials first set foot into SSA’s headquarters in February 2025. At the time, Schofield was hopeful that they would assist in modernizing antiquated systems at the agency, which doles out benefits to 75 million people.
During his first meeting with Musk’s deputies, he came prepared with ideas on how he could help. However, when a trio of DOGE staffers arrived, “lots of red flags went off,” Schofield told the Post.
He observed that they weren’t using the “standard-issue laptops” distributed to agency employees, and said it seemed as if they’d already accessed sensitive data, concluding that information may have been improperly obtained.
Over a month later, a judge issued a restraining order barring DOGE staffers from accessing SSA data. The ban was lifted by the Supreme Court last summer.
Following reports that Musk’s team had accessed Social Security data, a number of Democrats expressed outrage. In May, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said: “The Trump-Musk Social Security takeover has only meant more chaos and confusion for Americans…There’s nothing efficient about making it harder for people to access the checks they’ve earned and are owed.”
An attorney for one of the three DOGE staffers told the Post that the staffer had no knowledge of a plan to classify millions of people as dead.
Last year, SSA implemented a smaller scale version of the plan, placing some 6,100 migrants into its “Death Master File,” some of whom later appeared at government offices to demonstrate that they were not dead.
A pair of other whistleblowers had earlier raised alarms about DOGE’s access to sensitive data. Charles Borges, a former SSA chief data officer, alleged that DOGE staff shared Americans’ information through third-party services. Another anonymous whistleblower claimed that a Musk staffer had transported a thumb drive containing Americans’ data to a private firm.
Despite Musk’s promise to slash spending and save the nation $2 trillion, U.S. spending is actually up 6 percent over the same period last year, according to Treasury data released in May.
In a March Quinnipiac survey, 60 percent of registered voters said they disapproved of how DOGE has dealt with federal government employees, and 54 percent said the outfit was “doing more damage than good.”
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