The Social Security Administration (SSA) denied allegations Friday that it had planned to classify 2.7 million people as dead, after pressure to cut off immigrants from finances and government services under the Trump administration.
The whistleblower account, from former employee Jeremiah Schofield, highlighted by Democratic Senators Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut, and Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, raised concerns about federal privacy rules, and highlighted the tensions over the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was said to have pushed the SSA to declare the individuals as deceased.
"The whistleblower’s disclosure appears to reveal a carefully planned, willful falsification of federal government records in order to weaponize the SSA as a tool for immigration enforcement," the senators wrote in a June 4 letter to the SSA's commissioner Frank J. Bisignano.
An SSA official told Newsweek that the agency had not placed 2.7 million names to the Death Master File (DMF), adding that it "maintains the highest level of internal controls" which maintain the accuracy and integrity of personal records.
Newsweek reached out to Schofield's attorney and the White House via email for comment Friday afternoon.
The SSA's DMF is a federal database used to track deceased individuals and is relied upon across government and the private sector to verify identity and prevent fraud. According to the whistleblower disclosure, the file...
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