A plan reportedly hatched by DOGE and the Department of Homeland Security to add millions of living individuals to the Death Master File hasn’t materialized at the Social Security Administration, its commissioner told lawmakers Wednesday.
A whistleblower complaint from a former SSA career official detailed discussions led by DOGE and DHS to target undocumented immigrants by marking 2.7 million people as dead in the SSA database of death records.
During a House Ways and Means Joint Social Security and Work & Welfare Subcommittee hearing, Rep. Ron Estes, R-Kan., asked SSA chief Frank Bisignano if the agency has “knowingly” added living individuals to the Death Master File.
“We are not, and from the day I’ve been here, we haven’t added people to [the] Death Master File who are living,” Bisignano said.
Estes, who chairs the Social Security subcommittee, followed up by asking Bisignano if there are “any plans to do that in the future.”
“No,” the SSA head said. “No, sir.”
In his whistleblower declaration, Jeremiah Schofield, who spent more than 25 years at the SSA, said he “was asked to develop a strategic approach to ‘killing off’” individuals’ Social Security records. The directive from DHS would essentially eliminate people from SSA’s Numident system and add them to the Death Master File.
According to Schofield, DOGE associate Jon Koval said on a call that marking people as dead in SSA systems “would have two possible outcomes, either of which would be welcomed by DHS.”
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