Amid DOGE’s Failure to Find Fraud Committed by Entities Other than DOGE, DOGE Automates Deportation
The other day, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons claimed he wanted to get his deportation system working like Amazon Prime does.
The leader of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that his dream for the agency is squads of trucks rounding up immigrants for deportation the same way that Amazon trucks crisscross American cities delivering packages.
“We need to get better at treating this like a business,” Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said, explaining he wants to see a deportation process “like (Amazon) Prime, but with human beings.”
At first, I had a hard time even envisioning what he could mean by that. But then NYT described how Trump has starting setting the Social Security records of immigrants to dead as a way to debank them.
The goal is to cut those people off from using crucial financial services like bank accounts and credit cards, along with their access to government benefits.
The effort hinges on a surprising new tactic: repurposing Social Security’s “death master file,” which for years has been used to track dead people who should no longer receive benefits, to include the names of living people who the government believes should be treated as if they are dead. As a result of being added to the death database, they would be blacklisted from a coveted form of identity that allows them to make and more easily spend money.
Earlier this week, the names of more than 6,300 migrants whose legal status had just been revoked were added to the file, according to the documents.
The initial names are limited to people the administration says are convicted criminals and “suspected terrorists,” the documents show. But officials said the effort could broaden to include others in the country without authorization.
Their “financial lives,” Leland Dudek, the Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner, wrote in an email to staff members, would be “terminated.”
[snip]
On Tuesday, Aram Moghaddassi, a software engineer working for DOGE, sent Mr. Dudek the first batch of names to be added: the list of more than 6,300 immigrants homeland security officials had identified as having temporary legal status but who were now either on what he described as “the terrorist watch list,” or had been flagged as having “F.B.I. criminal records,” the documents show. The people’s parole status had been revoked that same day, Mr. Moghaddassi wrote.
The list included a 13-year-old and seven other minors, raising fears inside the agency that it was overly broad, according to one person familiar with the list who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
This will likely work in tandem with DHS’ plan to enforce a registration system, starting today, that serves to turn undocumented presence in the US into a felony (ironically, DHS is formalizing this registration system after Pam Bondi announced she’ll shift away from prosecuting FARA crimes, meaning the foreigners trying to influence US politics get better treatment than the ones picking crops).
Meanwhile, the acting IRS Commissioner, Melanie Krause, has announced her resignation after losing the battle to prevent tax data from being repurposed to feed Trump’s migrant campaign.
Krause’s decision to accept the agency’s deferred resignation offer comes on the heels of the IRS and Department of Homeland Security finalizing an agreement Monday to provide sensitive taxpayer data to federal immigration authorities to help the Trump administration locate and deport undocumented immigrants.
The controversial data sharing agreement between the agencies was one factor that played a role in Krause’s decision to leave, according to one source with knowledge of the situation. The source said that the last draft of the agreement that Krause had been involved with, and had reviewed, was different than the final agreement. Krause learned about the details of the final agreement from the news, the source said.
The Social Security-driven debanking and the IRS data-sharing are both DOGE-led efforts to mine data collected for one purpose and use it for another purpose — to make the deportation system work like a modern supply chain does. You might think this effort has nothing to do with waste fraud and abuse, but as I noted, back on February 19, Trump added streamlining deportation to the mandate of DOGE.
Meanwhile, yesterday Elon Musk confessed DOGE only expects to find $150 billion in saving for FY26 (that is, starting in October), a fraction of a fraction of what he previously claimed.
- Musk said he anticipates the $150 billion savings in the next fiscal year at Trump’s cabinet meeting Thursday.
- Musk repeated his claim that fraud and waste were “very common” in the government, this time giving the example, without evidence, of “people getting unemployment insurance who haven’t been born yet.”
- As recently as last month, Musk told Fox’s Bret Baier he expected DOGE to reach $1 trillion in savings by the time his tenure as a government employee is up in a matter of months.
This means that Elon won’t manage the same level of savings that the Inspectors General that Trump fired were on course to find, all without cutting services like Elon has. We could still have cancer cures and achieve the same level of savings — and all that’s before you consider the $500 billion hole Elon created in revenue projections.
Trump brought in an alleged illegal immigrant in the guise of finding waste fraud and abuse.
And all he achieved was to dramatically cut services that Americans cherish and, in the guise of finding fraud, automate the deportation system.
“Musk said he anticipates the $150 billion savings in the next fiscal year at Trump’s cabinet meeting Thursday.”
Those are gross estimates, not net. Any word on how much DOGE has cost the US in terms of the cost of losing court case after court case? What about the expenses of firing, then trying to rehire, essential folks they now say they didn’t mean to fire in the first case? What about the expenses of clawing back unspent NIH grants?
And what about the costs to the intelligence community as they try to find new intelligence sources for those whose cover was blown, and the expense of trying to rebuild trust with allies?
The net, not the gross, is what matters, Elon — and DOGE’s net is approaching the size of the one a kindergarten teacher uses to scoop goldfish out of the tank in her classroom.
Plus the expenses of having Not Enough People, so necessary things don’t get done on time, or at all.
An expected decrease of $500 billion in tax revenues due to layoffs at the IRS and DOJ’s tax division dwarfs the claimed $150 billion in DOGE savings. Who knew that Elon Musk would overpromise and underdeliver? At least we have a less effective regulatory sysyem and a weakened research establishmennt to show for it. Cry more, libtards.
Overpromise and underdeliver is the hallmark of Republicanism. Some may even label it “incompetence.”
The GOP’s new mission statement: FUBAR ;-)
Nope. Just pure lying.
They gaslight, and tell people what they want to hear. Then blame others when they can’t deliver on the lies sold as promises.
Last December, a US citizen friend with a Hispanic-sounding last name came to me for advice. “My passport isn’t due to expire for 18 months, but I’m afraid if I wait that long, I may have trouble renewing it. Am I being silly, or is this really something I should worry about?” I told him that I’d rather be silly and have a valid passport in 2026 than hold off and find myself up a creek.
He renewed his passport.
Given what is described here about weaponizing the social security database, I feel for anyone with a Hispanic sounding last name. The number of screwups will be epic, the likes of which the world has never seen (to borrow a phrase).
It’s not like DOGE and ICE have a great record of grabbing the “right” people off the streets and sticking them on a place to El Salvador. Hell, for all their bleating about there only being two genders, DOGE and ICE can’t seem to tell the difference between men and women.
Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses.
This song goes through my head when every time I think of Stephen Miller and his quest with Tom Homan to rid America of all the non white people.
In this respect, the trump/musk activities differ enormously from the Third Reich’s careful record-keeping (even if records -in real time-remained secret from the general public). Hitler’s government kept records to prove they believed in their [monstrous] cause & wanted to show receipts. On the other hand, amoral musk & trump don’t care about record keeping because their professed cause is downright phony. They just don’t care about anything, anyone but themselves. At this stage in their lives, I will no longer believe either one of them has any actionable self-doubt or conscience. Both, I fear, are seriously stuck in irreversible mental illness. [Like Amendment 25 for trump & Involuntary commitment for musk are going to happen!? Our national well-being is too far lost already.]
Trans people who have a gender change marker in any government record can likewise be legally terminated and disappeared, “treated as if they are dead,” through simple database comparisons. Migrants are the initial test population.
As quoted above from the NYT:
>> “The goal is to cut those people off from using crucial financial services like bank accounts and credit cards, along with their access to government benefits.
>> “The effort hinges on a surprising new tactic: repurposing Social Security’s “death master file,” which for years has been used to track dead people who should no longer receive benefits, to include the names of living people who the government believes should be treated as if they are dead. As a result of being added to the death database, they would be blacklisted from a coveted form of identity that allows them to make and more easily spend money.”
And speaking of Amazon Prime as a deportation model, consider how the government databases now being exposed to DOGE could just as easily be compared against user records held by Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, banks, insurance companies. This is what I think DOGE is ultimately about.
“…consider how the government databases now being exposed to DOGE could just as easily be compared against user records held by Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, banks, insurance companies. This is what I think DOGE is ultimately about.”
I’m inclined to agree.
Meanwhile Doge has destroyed the lives and livelihoods of thousands of federal workers.
Of course, “DOGE” was always about this (and grift). “Saving taxpayers money” was always a sham.
And is still terrorizing them. Until this administration has ended they will remain terrorized and then some.
If you look on the fednews subreddit, it will break your heart.
I have a close friend who’s a federal employee. The messages they send me are likely a distillation of the subreddit.
Here’s a detailed list of DOGE contract cancellations organized by state and congressional districts:
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/doge-cuts-by-city-state-and-congressional-district
“At first, I had a hard time even envisioning what he could mean by that.”
Well, it’s certainly hard to envision what the mechanics of that kind of operation would be, but I had no difficulty discerning how it will be paid for. That is, directing public funds to private contractors, one of which might happened to be named Jeff Bezos? Entirely consistent with the “run government like a business” claptrap.
They’re not people, they’re just digital ones and zeroes.
(Credit MAGA influencer who said after the crash, “Losing money means nothing. Digital ones and zeroes. In the end, you won’t miss any of it.”)
MAGA fiscal hawks are demanding an investigation into whether MTG used her still un-repaid covid socialist bailout aka PPP to buy the dip off Trump’s insider tip. Nah, just kidding, it’s all good bruh.
https://apnews.com/article/greene-stocks-conflicts-interest-restoration-hardware-tariffs-trump-f9922a970c837cb76dd8ddc01f20f51d
The WaPo piece you cited is a good gumshoe effort on nailing Musk & Brother on their immigration status in the 1990’s. Lies and half-truths all the way down the line, including visa assistance by an early investor (Mohr Davidow Ventures) and the “legal advice” of an immigration lawyer, Jocelyne Lew, in 1996.
“In fact, when they [investors] did fund us, they realized that we were illegal immigrants,” Kimbal said in the 2013 interview.
“’Well,” Elon said.
“Yes, we were,” Kimbal said.
“I’d say it was a gray area,” Elon replied, to audience laughter.
“We were illegal immigrants,” Kimbal said flatly.
So when and how did Musk become a naturalized citizen? In 2002 — per a highly-edited Wikipedia entry and various puff pieces in print media — the year *after* entry requirements were screwed down tight, immediately post-9/11? Immigration records can supposedly be accessed via FOIA — albeit with subject’s permission — but naturalization ceremonies are typically reported in local media so there would be something somewhere, no?
Although the question remains, What difference now and What is anybody going to do about it?
And AFAIK you still need a citizen to sponsor you, not a corporation. (My parents sponsored a family from Iran, in the 70s. The dinner the new citizens threw in celebration was, by the report I heard, memorable.)
With all of this “waste, fraud, and abuse”, who are the perpetrators?
If someone is ripping off the government via social security payments to a non-existent 150-year old man or some other illegitimate scheme, that would be criminal behavior. Where is the person who has done the crime? Why is that criminal not being indicted?
The fact that we are not seeing indictments of the hypothetical fraudsters at a level anywhere near the fraud claims indicates this whole “waste, fraud, and abuse” thing is a flim-flam. In fact, it reminds me of the post-2020-election hysteria proliferated by the Trumpsters, with allegations of supposed electoral fraud being thrown out so fast that most people couldn’t keep up with them. By the time the lack of evidence for a particular fraud allegation would hit the press, few people would see it because the original false claim had been superseded by a whole nother batch of crazy.
Bannon said that the way to keep the media off their backs was to flood the zone with shit. That’s what they did after the 2020 election – and it worked well enough for enough people that Trump could be voted in again in 2024. And that is what they are doing now.
The flooding the zone with shit definitely goes back at least to Rush Limbaugh’s reign of error and falsehood in the 1980’s.
As JD Vance roughly said, “the rules were that you were not going to fact check.”
Since DOGE is an informal quasi-department created out of whole cloth, they may as well create another new department, run by the most competent and professional people, of course: Dept. of Zone Flooding. To be followed by the provision of emergency flood relief provided by a severely-downsized FEMA.
No one could have anticipated . . .
Because of the glitch, there’s one little hiccup that might give Trump heartburn: “For now, that [the glitch] means the tariffs are not being collected by the U.S. government.”
How do you spell schadenfreude ?
Following the “Death Master File” manipulation to a chilling “Stalinist” path would be, regardless of citizenship status, anyone could be erased by opaquely being declared dead. One could not contest their death, even with a box full of historical paperwork and pictures. The dead have few rights. Catch-22. Might the first test cases be Krebs and Taylor?
Well then, I say Elon is an “alleged” illegal immigrant he must be treated as such. Doesn’t need to be proven just hog chain him and put a black bag over his head, ship to El Salvador.
Comrade Krasnov should also get the same treatment.
The law is not going to save us, people in the street in MASSIVE numbers is the only thing that will work. The courts are useless, the law does not apply and congress has abdicated. The oath to the constitution requires leaders that believe in it. The current crop of “leaders” is woefully lacking the required moral dedication to do so. The only branch that has enforcement is shredding that concept of the belief in the constitution. If the public dithers like the court system that utterly failed the last four years then it check mate we will only have one branch of government with two performance branches, congress and the courts for support of the executive.
Look, you’ve been on auto-moderation for over a year because of the way you comment. This is not a place to off load your fee-fees; nothing you wrote in 162 words is anything more than an emo dump, bordering on a call to violence.
Add something constructive and informative in comments rather than the kind of stuff which is better suited to a microblog platform like Facebook/Threads/Bluesky/Mastodon, or you’re going to remain in permanent auto-moderation.
ADDER: Oh no, honey, you missed *my* point — references that could be construed to endorse and encourage violence like your black-bag crack are not acceptable here. Furthermore, you gave little thought to how that crack might affect this site, you just wanted to offload your frustration. Then you decided you were going to dump a second time. Nope.
Setting living people to dead is astoundingly mean and evil, but it’s also so damn DUMB from a data integrity stand point. Unless you’ve got some sort of “not really” marker, how do you fix it without having to double-check everyone marked dead during the interval? How do you trust anything in there? It’s multi-level fuck-uppery.
And when the inevitable wrong people are put on the death list, I can only imagine how hard that would be to fix. Especially since doge has fired everybody that would know how.
A minority of eligible voters elected (fairly, by our screwy system) someone they were gulled into perceiving as a “businessman.” Their top priority was his management of the economy, followed by “immigration,” that myth perpetrated by a sophisticated rightwing lie machine.
The Faux Businessman was supposed to lower prices. Along with his “genius” billionaire donor, he was supposed to make America rich again–whatever that meant to his voters.
“Terminating the financial life” of *anyone* renders that person unable to contribute to the economy. It will inevitably decrease Social Security and Medicare contributions, as well as consumer spending, which is already tanking–or on the verge of doing so in anticipation of imminent tariff-induced price hikes. Packaging human beings for ejection as efficiently as Amazon Prime makes as much economic sense as kicking yourself in the dick.
Can’t wait for those tax cuts to make America great again.
My MAGA clock says he’s running out of time to end the war in 24 hours with one phone call. Oh wait, Leavitt says he’s “really frustrated” so that must mean a peace deal is imminent. She’s so modest!
Been waiting since 2017 for those tax cuts to make America great again. *sigh*
Instead, this:
I stopped looking, didn’t check after the bell.
Biden’s stock market was up 13% at this point in his term.
Tiny’s is down 10%.
That’s a spread of 23%.
That’s like racing a mile (4 laps) and losing by a lap.
So much WINNING!
current (“delayed by 15 minutes”)
DJIA: 40,212.71 (up 1.56%)
NASDAQ: 16,724.45 (up 2.06%)
S&P 500: 5,363.35 (up 1.81%)
and the worst part is, one of the smaller planks he ran on was “ending the debanking of conservatives/rural people/businesses/poor-folks”, and now he *not only* isn’t ending it, but instead is doing it to immigrants, including kids, *on purpose* and in a much more devious way, direct from the government instead of through banks!
that whole thing about every accusation being a confession/promise, yet again, ugh
He doesn’t shop anywhere but clothing stores, so he’s never noticed the ubiquitous ATMs. Or that you can use a debit (“ATM”) card just about everywhere.
“Trump brought in an alleged illegal immigrant in the guise of finding waste fraud and abuse.
“And all he achieved was to dramatically cut services that Americans cherish and, in the guise of finding fraud, automate the deportation system.”
That was the point. “Waste, fraud, abuse” were the smokescreen.
from Some Comments on the Society of the Spectacle by Guy DeBord:
“It is always a mistake to try to explain something by opposing Mafia and state: they are never rivals. Theory easily verifies what all the rumors in practical life of all too easily shown. The Mafia is not an outsider in this world; it is perfectly at home. Indeed, in the integrated spectacle, it stands as the _model_ of all advanced commercial enterprises.”
Or as a high school friend put it back in 1967 when we were in high school, “The Revolution is over. The Mafia has won.” With the recent manufactured economic chaos I’ve been reprising this clip explaining the Mafia bust-out which I was posting repeatedly during Trmp’s first term:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPtjyqgZAUk
> You might think this effort has nothing to do with waste fraud and abuse
No, no, I think this effort is wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive, so it seems to be directly in line with DOGE’s mandate to me.
FDA to replace laid-off employees with contractors, sources say [CBS]
A surefire way to save money – look how well it works at DOD. :)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fda-replace-laid-off-employees-contractors/
Meanwhile, with NIOSH pretty much wiped out, savvy buyers will want to stock up on NIOSH-certified N95s in anticipation of the next respiratory pandemic.
OT as to deportations/DOGE, but worth notice. Elon’s people chopping heads at NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) weighed disproportionately on those policing self driving automobiles: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/04/car-safety-experts-at-nhtsa-which-regulates-tesla-axed-by-doge/
The item is an FT original, but no paywall at Ars, 4 authors, mid-item, “Musk, Doge, and Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment.”
Elon seems to be selling “self driving” that is not fully that, but technical reality is hard for layman’s analysis. He is pitching it, and then specific auto safety regulators get axed. Not good. Fair? Who’s to guess?