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The Trump administration has classified over 6,000 living immigrants as dead, canceling their Social Security numbers and effectively wiping out their ability to work or receive benefits in an effort to get them to leave the country, people familiar with the situation have said.
Daily Mail.com reports that the move will make it much harder for those affected to use banks or other basic services where Social Security numbers are required. It is part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump to crack down on immigrants who were allowed to enter and remain temporarily in the US under programs instituted by his predecessor, Joe Biden.
The administration is moving the immigrants’ names and legally obtained Social Security numbers to a database that federal officials normally use to track the deceased, according to sources. Since the plans are yet to be publicly detailed, the sources spoke anonymously.
The officials said stripping the immigrants of their Social Security numbers will cut them off from many financial services and encourage them to “self-deport” and abandon the US for their birth countries.
A representative from the Social Security Administration did not respond to a request for comment on the news that living immigrants were being classified as dead. The agency maintains the most complete federal database of individuals who have died. The file contains over 142 million records dating back to 1899.
