Social Security is now an immigration enforcement tool

Driving the news: There are hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the U.S. with "temporary parole" status — granted through various Biden-era programs. They received Social Security numbers in order to work.

• A White House official tells Axios the Department of Homeland Security identified more than 6,300 of these folks who, they say, are on the FBI terrorist watch list, or with FBI criminal records.
• The Social Security agency moved their names into its "Death Master File," a database of dead people. They have since renamed the file the "Ineligible Master File."

Zoom in: Inside the Social Security Administration, officials worry that people will be mistakenly added to the list, upending their lives.

• "Some agency staff have since checked the names and Social Security numbers of some of the youngest immigrants against data the agency typically uses to search for criminal history and found no evidence of crimes or law enforcement interactions," staffers told WashPost.

Between the lines: Getting on this list by mistake can wreak havoc on someone's life — employers, landlords, credit agencies, and insurers all check it.

• Americans who've been accidentally declared dead have lost health insurance coverage.
• The idea is to force people out of the country. "President Trump promised mass deportations," says spokeswoman Liz Huston. "And by removing the monetary incentive for illegal aliens to come and stay, we will encourage them to self-deport."

Getting off the list isn't easy. "There's a whole 'I'm not dead' routine that goes to the agency's processing centers," Marcela Escobar-Alava, the agency's former chief information officer, told Axios earlier this month.

• The centers are backlogged, and recent staffing cuts will likely make that worse, she says.

Catch up quick: Social Security isn't the only non-immigration agency now involved in the immigration crackdown.

• The Internal Revenue Service reached an agreement last Monday with the Department of Homeland Security to share the tax information of undocumented immigrants with immigration authorities.

Zoom out: The President has vowed not to cut Social Security benefits. Instead, the White House argues its plan is to increase benefits by eliminating income taxes on cash benefits, a boost to retirees checks.

• The White House official also said the agency is developing "AI-powered tools to handle simple tasks like password changes and benefit notifications." That would free-up more staff to work on more complex cases, they said.

Yes, but: In February, the agency announced it would cut 7,000 employees. Many top career officials with decades of experience have left; more took "deferred resignation" offers, while others are being reassigned into new roles.

• Some of these folks might not be qualified to carry those roles out, worries one current employee who's been with the agency for nearly a decade,
• "It's not even like walking on eggshells," said this staffer, who asked for anonymity fearing retaliation. "It's more like walking on broken glass."