The Trump administration is using sensitive government data—normally kept private—to locate undocumented immigrants in the U.S., targeting where they work, live, and study.
This data, which many individuals gave in good faith while applying for housing or filing taxes, is now being used to support the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies.
At the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), officials are preparing a new rule that would ban mixed-status households—families where some members are U.S. citizens or legal residents and others are undocumented—from receiving public housing assistance. According to insiders, the administration is also trying to remove existing mixed-status families from public housing altogether.
Meanwhile, the Social Security Administration (SSA) recently added over 6,000 Latino immigrants, many suspected of being undocumented, to a government database meant for tracking deceased individuals.
This move could cut off their ability to work legally or access benefits. Additionally, the IRS has agreed to share confidential taxpayer information with immigration authorities to help identify undocumented individuals. That agreement led to the resignation of the acting IRS commissioner.
This is part of a broader push across multiple federal departments to link personal data with immigration enforcement efforts.
Legal experts say the effort is a serious violation of privacy rights and government trust, as this data was never meant to be used for immigration enforcement.
“It’s not just about one group,” said Tanya Broder of the National Immigration Law Center. “We all care about privacy. No one wants their healthcare or tax information used to target them.”
The White House did not respond to questions, but a DHS spokesperson defended the move, saying the government is now “doing what it should have all along”—sharing data between agencies to address national issues.
They claimed the sharing of personal data is necessary to identify criminals, track public benefit usage, and ensure national security.
President Donald Trump, who has long promised a record number of deportations, has taken major steps in that direction. His administration has reactivated family detention centers, considered using the Guantánamo Bay facility for migrant detention, and invoked centuries-old laws like the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to expel suspected gang members without a hearing.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has also worked to revoke temporary protected status for Venezuelans and reduce protections for Haitian immigrants.
While not all of these steps have been publicly announced, many government employees across agencies have confirmed their involvement anonymously, fearing backlash or job loss.
It’s unclear exactly how the data is being used to carry out deportations, but insiders say the enforcement ramp-up has already begun.
At the SSA, staff were asked to help DHS identify individuals using fraudulent Social Security numbers. At the IRS, officials said the goal is to use tax data to help track an estimated 7 million undocumented individuals.
Within HUD, Secretary Scott Turner confirmed in March that his department is sharing data with DHS to make sure undocumented immigrants are not benefiting from public housing programs.
Turner told Fox News Digital that 24,000 people are living in HUD-assisted housing who are considered “ineligible” because of their immigration status.
When families apply for housing, they must disclose each member’s immigration status. While undocumented individuals do not directly receive benefits, their presence has traditionally been prorated into the overall assistance given to the household.
Now, the administration wants to stop this entirely—even if it means evicting citizens living with undocumented family members.
This effort is being led by Mike Mirski, a HUD official from DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), who plans to first target large cities like New York and Chicago.
One staff member said Mirski is using complex datasets he doesn’t fully understand to decide who is a citizen and who is not.
While HUD doesn’t have the legal authority to evict people directly, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does. Public housing authorities have been holding internal meetings and webinars to prepare in case ICE arrives to remove families.
One housing staffer admitted that, in such scenarios, their only real option is to call the police.
Kasey Lovett, a HUD spokesperson, said the department can only help 1 in 4 families who need housing, and that “illegal aliens” are taking up resources that should go to U.S. citizens. She added, “Secretary Turner is using every tool to correct Biden’s negligence and prioritize American citizens.”
At the Social Security Administration, members of the DOGE team were given access to highly sensitive personal data—names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, mailing addresses, bank details, and even citizenship status—under existing data-sharing agreements. These officials later asked how to interpret and use that data to identify undocumented workers.
Many career employees at SSA grew uncomfortable, fearing they were enabling a system that could wrongly affect legal residents or citizens. One SSA worker said they felt torn between staying inside to limit the damage or stepping away and letting DOGE proceed unchecked.
That debate ended on March 21, when a federal judge blocked DOGE from accessing SSA databases. However, even after the ruling, DOGE members repeatedly tried to regain access to the data, raising questions about compliance with the court order.
A Social Security spokesperson later stated that the agency would still collaborate with DHS “to protect all Americans,” including using data exchanges.
At the Education Department, officials have reportedly tried to collect the nationalities of student protesters involved in demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza. Some believe the data could be used to target foreign students for visa revocation.
This follows an essay published by Max Eden, a former American Enterprise Institute scholar who now works at the White House. In that article, Eden suggested using university protest data to identify foreign students and revoke their visas.
When asked about the Education Department’s actions, Craig Trainor, the department’s acting civil rights chief, said they were simply collecting information to assess how schools handled antisemitism complaints. He did not confirm whether the data would be used for deportation purposes.