MW DOGE wanted to declare 2.7 million people 'dead' at Social Security: Whistleblower

By Jessica Hall

This is the third whistleblower to come forward about alleged illegal activity by Trump's Department of Government Efficiency

Marking someone as dead at Social Security cuts off their ability to work, use banking service or receive benefits.

The Trump administration planned to place 2.7 million living people in a so-called death file that would have cut off their ability to work, receive benefits or use banking services as part of an immigration-enforcement push, a former Social Security executive said in a whistleblower lawsuit.

Jeremiah Schofield, who worked at Social Security for 25 years before leaving the agency in October, refused to help with the plan after government lawyers warned that falsely marking living people as dead could violate federal law.

The latest whistleblower lawsuit, which was first reported by the Washington Post, comes after the Trump administration entity known as the Department of Government Efficiency embedded itself in the Social Security Administration last year with the stated aim of rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. DOGE has come under fire from two other whistleblowers for mishandling data and compromising the Social Security numbers of every American.

The Department of Homeland Security initially asked the Social Security Administration to mark about 6,000 living people as dead, and those people were added to the death file, according to the latest complaint. They were later removed from that database, the complaint said.

Then in April 2025, DHS transmitted to SSA a second list of 2.7 million individuals to be marked as dead, the whistleblower said.

Schofield expressed concern that the plan was part of an effort to "deport immigrants, regardless of whether they were suspected terrorists or convicted violent criminals," according to the complaint.

When asked why DHS wanted the 2.7 million people to be marked as dead, a DOGE worker said that "either the lives of these individuals would be ruined ... and they would be driven to 'self-deport'" or "they would have to go to a local Social Security office, at which point SSA field office staff would send them to DHS offices," where officials would "detain them for deportation," according to the whistleblower complaint.

The SSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

-Jessica Hall

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June 05, 2026 10:42 ET (14:42 GMT)

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