DOGE Is Building a Master Database to Surveil and Track Immigrants

Operatives from Elon Musk’s alleged Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are gathering a maestro database astatine the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that could way and surveil undocumented immigrants, 2 sources with nonstop cognition archer WIRED.

DOGE is knitting unneurotic migration databases from crossed DHS and uploading information from extracurricular agencies including the Social Security Administration, arsenic good arsenic voting records, sources say. This, experts archer WIRED, could make a strategy that could aboriginal beryllium searched to place and surveil immigrants.

The standard astatine which DOGE is seeking to interconnect data, including delicate biometric data, has ne'er been done before, raising alarms with experts who fearfulness it whitethorn pb to disastrous privateness violations for citizens, certified overseas workers, and undocumented immigrants.

A United States Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) information lake, oregon centralized repository, existed astatine DHS anterior to DOGE that included information related to migration cases, similar requests for benefits, supporting grounds successful migration cases, and whether an exertion has been received and is pending, approved, oregon denied. Since astatine slightest mid-March, however, DOGE has been uploading wide amounts of information to this preexisting USCIS information lake, including information from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), SSA, and voting information from Pennsylvania and Florida, 2 DHS sources with nonstop cognition archer WIRED.

“They are trying to amass a immense magnitude of data,” a elder DHS authoritative tells WIRED. “It has thing to bash with uncovering fraud oregon wasteful spending … They are already cross-referencing migration with SSA and IRS arsenic good arsenic elector data.”

Since president Donald Trump’s instrumentality to the White House earlier this year, WIRED and different outlets person reported extensively connected DOGE’s attempts to gain unprecedented access to authorities data, but until recently, small has been publically known astir the intent of specified requests oregon however they would beryllium processed. Reporting from The New York Times and The Washington Post has made wide that 1 purpose is to cross-reference datasets and leverage entree to delicate SSA systems to efficaciously chopped immigrants disconnected from participating successful the economy, which the medication hopes would unit them to permission the county. The scope of DOGE’s efforts to enactment the Trump administration’s migration crackdown look to beryllium acold broader than this, though. Among different things, it seems to impact centralizing immigrant-related information from crossed the authorities to surveil, geolocate, and way targeted immigrants successful adjacent existent time.

DHS and the White House did not instantly respond to requests for comment.

DOGE’s postulation of personal information connected immigrants astir the US has dovetailed with the Trump administration’s continued migration crackdown. “Our medication volition not remainder until each azygous convulsive amerciable alien is removed from our country,” Karoline Leavitt, White House property secretary, said successful a property league connected Tuesday.

On Thursday, Gerald Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia and ranking subordinate connected the House Oversight Committee, sent a missive to the SSA bureau of the inspector wide stating that representatives person spoken with an bureau whistleblower who has warned them that DOGE was gathering a “master database” containing SSA, IRS, and HHS data.