The Trump Administration has implemented a new ‘financial death’ strategy to coerce immigrants into leaving the country on their own.
A social security master-list previously known as the ‘Death Master List’ meant for invalidating the social security numbers of deceased individuals is being repurposed in the Trump Administrations newest attempt to halt immigration. Immigrants legally authorized to work within the United States are having their lawfully obtained social security numbers invalidated. The Social Security Administration has redubbed the list the ‘Ineligible Master File’ and has begun canceling the legal status of immigrants and then moving them to this file in an attempt to encourage them to “self-deport” to their country of origin by cutting them off from critical financial resources.
Without a valid social security number, it is difficult or impossible to open or access bank accounts and credit cards, or access government benefits. So far over 6,300 migrants have had their legal statuses revoked and been added to the ineligible master list. This initial number are people whom the Trump administration claims are convicted or suspected criminals, but the effort is likely to broaden to more people in the future.
Democrats and advocates have raised concerns that the policy is going to be used to target those with temporary legal status who entered the country through parole programs under the Biden administration. This move is a part of a larger effort led by the administration to give ICE access to an increasing amount of sensitive information for its deportation efforts. Back in February, the Department of Homeland Security reached an agreement to give ICE the last known addresses of 98,000 people to aid in deportation efforts.
This is unprecedented as agencies working with sensitive personal information typically do not share this information with other agencies except in urgent dangerous situations. Fears have arisen regarding the potential unintended consequences of this, such as concerns that the administration could mistakenly “financially kill” citizens and legal permanent residents, which is difficult to undo and can lead to homes being foreclosed and bank accounts shut down.
Lending credence to these anxieties is the fact that an anonymous source leaked that of the people within the 6,300, at least 8 are minors, some as young as 13. Since this categorization is being done largely behind the scenes, it is difficult to confirm whether the Trump administration is truly using the strategy in the way that they claim.
Additionally, although the list has been renamed, it has not been modified to distinguish whose social security number has been canceled due to death versus whose has been canceled for loss of legal status. Currently, the people being added to the list for immigration purposes are being assigned fake death dates. In a memo, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote that this move will “prevent suspected terrorists who are here illegally” from accessing “privileges reserved for those with lawful status” but did not elaborate on how they define suspected terrorists.
In its quest for mass deportation and isolationism, the Trump Administration employs the autocratic strategy of scapegoating. The administration often utilizes ‘punching-down’ tactics and rhetoric characteristic of many right-wing populist demagogues. The focus on immigration shifts blame for economic and social issues away from policy failures and onto a vulnerable group, rallying support together through fear rather than reason. Scapegoating is a threat to democracy as it normalizes and primes the public to support authoritarian rule to curb the perceived danger. However, scapegoating present throughout the both Trump administrations and campaign has already given way to this higher-level of authoritarianism present in his second administration and this policy.
This latest self-deportation effort is constitutionally dubious and a symptom of larger democratic backsliding occurring under the administration. Several of the administration’s deportation efforts have been declared unconstitutional by federal courts, and this move seems like a blatant attempt to get around that. This strategy is also representative of “stealth authoritarianism” in which repressive measures are hidden under the guise of rule of law to give them an image of legitimacy and make them harder to detect and reverse.
Because stealth authoritarianism makes use of legitimate democratic power, it is hard to identify and stop abuse. The changing of legal statuses represents one of the many mechanisms in the stealth authoritarian toolkit: rule-of-law rhetoric. Stealth authoritarians will often enact anti-democratic reforms while claiming that their goal is to improve democracy.
Looking at the quote from Kristi Noem’s memo, she justifies the use of this strategy by saying that it cracks down on those who have not followed the proper procedures for immigration and are suspected of crimes. However, this reasoning falls apart given that the people are not being given due process rights, so regardless of the legality of their presence in the country or any potential suspected criminal activity, depriving them of their legally obtained SSN without a trial is anti-democratic. The way in which the administration defines “suspected terrorism” is also an open definition, allowing them to not fully need to justify the ‘financial death’ of these individuals.
In addition, concerns have been raised that the policy is primarily targeting immigrants who entered and gained temporary legal status during the Biden administration. This further undermines norms of mutual tolerance and forbearance between the current administration and the previous one, as many of the immigrants are being targeted for political reasons. The policy treats legally admitted immigrants as unworthy of their status as they are framed as an extension of the Biden administration which is also targeted as being “illegitimate”. It implies to the larger American population that legal identity is up for debate when it can be weaponized as a political tool.
With each new Trump Administration policy, the future of many immigrants in America becomes increasingly uncertain. As anti-democratic policies continue to percolate into day to day life, it becomes time to ask ourselves: how secure is American democracy really?
Bibliography:
Berzon, Alexandra, Hamed Aleaziz, Nicholas Nehamas, Ryan Mac, and Tara Siegel Bernard. 2025. “Pressuring Migrants to ‘Self-Deport,’ White House Moves to Cancel Social Security Numbers.” The New York Times, April 10, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/us/politics/migrants-deport-social-security-doge.html.
Hofstadter, Richard. 1967. The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays. New York: NY Vintage Books.
Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown.
Navarro, Aaron. 2025. “Trump Administration Invalidates Social Security Numbers of Immigrants, Pushing Them to ‘Self Deport.’” CBS News. CBS News. April 11, 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/social-security-dead-immigrants-temporary-legal-status.
“Trump Administration Lists Thousands of Living Immigrants as Dead to Prompt Them to Leave.” 2025. The Guardian. The Guardian. April 11, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/11/social-security-canceled-immigrants.
Varol, Ozan. 2015. “Stealth Authoritarianism.” Iowa Law Review 100 (4): 1676–1717.
Weissert, Will, and Fatima Hussein. 2025. “Social Security Lists Thousands of Living Immigrants as Dead to Prompt Them to Leave, AP Sources Say.” AP News. April 11, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/living-immigrants-dead-social-security-numbers-trump-c10737cbe36e3108fb244a555777d880.
It’s amazing how authoritarian tactics can look so different depending on the context. Texas’s Operation Lone Star definitely reveals how fear and policy can be used to pressure vulnerable individuals into leaving the country. Much like what I wrote about concerning El Salvador and their current president, it is mind boggling to witness leaders abuse loopholes and legal systems to target people seemingly without breaking any laws. It also raises the question: how can we tell the difference between soft authoritarianism and bad policy now that all the lines are blurred?