Lawfare Archive: Social Security, the ‘Death Master File,’ and Immigration Enforcement
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 6 June 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From May 2, 2025: As the Trump administration seeks to escalate its immigration crackdown, the government has turned to a concerning source of information for data on immigrants: the Social Security Administration. Reports indicate that Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative and the Department of Homeland Security successfully pushed Social Security officials to provide access to what’s commonly known as the “Death Master File,” allowing the government to mark living immigrants as dead in the Social Security Administration’s systems. The goal, according to press reports, is to make the lives of these individuals so difficult that they choose to leave the country.
What exactly is the Death Master File, and why is this strategy so alarming? To understand, Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic spoke to Kathleen Romig, Director of Social Security and Disability Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Devin O’Connor, a senior fellow at the center. They explained the unsettling implications of tinkering with the Death Master File and situated these efforts within the broader scope of the Trump administration—and DOGE’s—repeated attacks on Social Security.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Marissa Wong, Internet Lawfare, with an episode from the Lawfare |
| 0:13.0 | for June 6, 2006. |
| 0:17.0 | On June 3rd, President Trump signed an executive order that moves nearly 10,000 career federal workers into Schedule Policy slash Career, initially called Schedule F. |
| 0:28.6 | This recategorization strips these federal employees of their civil service protections, making them effectively at-will employees. |
| 0:36.8 | For today's archive, I chose an episode from May 2, 2025, |
| 0:41.7 | in which Quinta Durecic sat down with Kathleen Romig and Devin O'Connor |
| 0:45.4 | to discuss the Trump administration's Doge initiative |
| 0:48.3 | to create a, quote, death master file, unquote, |
| 0:52.1 | at the Social Security Administration |
| 0:53.8 | and how the creation of Schedule |
| 0:55.9 | F has affected the agency. |
| 1:07.9 | It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic, here with Kathleen Romick and Devin O'Connor of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. |
| 1:19.3 | When we say that we're worried about the Social Security Administration weaponizing the Deathmaster File against political enemies. That's not just a dark fantasy. |
| 1:29.4 | That's something that they've proven that they are willing to do and that they did do against |
| 1:33.4 | Governor Mills. |
| 1:34.6 | We're talking about the Trump administration's reported efforts to wield data from the |
| 1:39.8 | Social Security Administration as a tool of immigration enforcement. |
| 1:44.7 | We're here to discuss what I think is one of the stranger and frankly more disturbing |
| 1:49.8 | efforts spearheaded by Elon Musk's Doge Project, which is the plan to leverage the Social |
| 1:56.5 | Security Administration's Death Master File as a tool for immigration enforcement. |
| 2:02.7 | Before we get too deep in, though, I do want to start with the basics. What exactly is the death master file? You have to |
| 2:08.2 | start with the idea that the Social Security Administration has been tasked with ensuring that |
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