Kristi Noem details how DOGE is working to find illegal immigrants who unlawfully hold Social Security numbers

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem said on Monday that an official with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will help to identify illegal immigrants who unlawfully hold U.S. social security numbers.

Antonio Gracias, a longtime friend of DOGE head Elon Musk, is creating a specialized DOGE immigration task force stationed at DHS and other agencies to locate sensitive data on illegal immigrants, Politico reported. Noem said on “Fox & Friends” that about 9 million non-U.S. citizens received Social Security numbers throughout former President Joe Biden’s administration and that Garcia’s work has already identified over 6,000 illegal immigrant criminals who had Social Security numbers.

“I’ve met Antonio, and he’s brilliant. He’s gonna be working to make sure that individuals who got Social Security numbers in this country should be using them for the right things and they shouldn’t be on our benefit programs,” Noem said. “We have over 6,000 individuals who have been identified through their work already that have been on the terror watchlist [and] who are criminals … It happens when you put a train wreck like Joe Biden in the White House and it’s gonna be a lot of work to clean it up. But just in the last four-and-a-half years, we’ve had 9 million people get Social Security numbers that are not U.S. citizens.”

“So it may be people that have some sort of  legal status but a lot of them are illegals that were given a Social Security number in just the last four-and-a-half years and we’re gonna have to figure out if they should be here, if they are here illegally under a program, and if they are here illegally then they certainly shouldn’t be using that Social Security number to be on our programs and they should be removed or given the opportunity to go home on their own,” the DHS secretary continued.

WATCH:

The new DOGE division is aiming to effectively cancel the Social Security numbers of 6,300 illegal immigrants who have criminal records or were on the FBI’s terror watch list, according to Politico. The administration is working with the Social Security Administration to add these illegal immigrants to a database that tracks dead people in order to ensure that they do not receive benefits.

DOGE said that more than 900 of the 6,300 illegal immigrants received $600,000 worth of federal benefits, including Medicaid, federal student loans and unemployment insurance, according to The New York Times.

Aram Moghaddassi, Payton Rehling, Kyle Schutt, Edward Coristine, and Mark Elez are all key DOGE engineers who now have access to DHS’s data, which has allowed them to access information on the illegal immigrants reportedly receiving government benefits, Politico reported. These individuals are working to revoke paroles, visas and temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants with the goal of prompting them to self deport.

The identified individuals were identified as having temporary legal status under the Biden administration, though their parole statuses have been revoked by the current administration, the Times reported.

The DHS secretary further said that the Trump administration is giving illegal immigrants the “opportunity” to independently return to their own countries rather than be forced out of the U.S. Over 5,000 illegal immigrants have opted to self-deport through the CBP Home app, a DHS app including a feature to allow illegal immigrants to self-deport.

“That’s the one thing that President Trump would like, is for everybody to be given the opportunity to go home if they would wish to,” Noem said on “Fox & Friends.”

After a record high number of illegal immigrants flooded into the U.S. during the Biden administration, the Trump administration has overseen the opposite effect. Border Patrol agents counted roughly 7,180 crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border during March, marking the all-time lowest number of border crossings recorded in a single month.

Latest posts by Nicole Silverio (see all)

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.