US inspects personal data to find migrants targeted in Trump's deportation plans

Donald Trump's administration is using personal data, which is normally protected from dissemination, to find undocumented immigrants where they work, study and live, often with the goal of removing them from their housing and the workforce, reported The Detroit News.

Staffers of the Department of Government Efficiency have been given access to government databases, containing private information about where people work or live, reported The Independent.

This is being done all with the intention of identifying undocumented immigrants and assisting in Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

At agencies such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Social Security Administration and IRS, those databases contain private information that immigrants of all statuses have submitted about themselves, believing the information would not be used against them.

Officials are working at HUD on a rule that would ban mixed-status households or those with people who have different immigration or citizenship statuses from obtaining public housing, unnamed staffers.

Spearheaded by Elon Musk, DOGE is combing through HUD data to identify undocumented immigrants and then share that data with the Department of Homeland Security to have people removed from accessing public benefits.

This is being done even if they live with someone who has legal status.

In a string of moves to use government data to help back the executive branch’s priorities, the push is the latest.

Legal experts, however, say the moves risk breaking privacy rules and can sow distrust in the government.

“It’s not only about one subgroup of people, it’s really about all of us,” Tanya Broder, senior counsel for health and economic justice policy at the National Immigration Law Centre told the Post. “Everyone cares about their privacy. Nobody wants their health-care information or tax information broadcast and used to go after us.”

The White House, however, has backed the moves, saying sharing data to find migrants and remove them.

“Information sharing across agencies is essential to identify who is in our country, including violent criminals, determine what public safety and terror threats may exist, scrub these individuals from voter rolls, as well as identify what public benefits these aliens are using at taxpayer expense,” a Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs told the Post.

“American tax dollars should be used for the benefit of American citizens, especially when it comes to an issue as pressing as our nation’s housing crisis,” Secretary of HUD, Scott Turner, said in a statement. “This new agreement will leverage resources, including technology and personnel, to ensure the American people are the only priority when it comes to public housing.”

Officials at the IRS have agreed to share specific tax information related to undocumented immigrants with ICE. The agency could use that information to locate millions of people it suspects of being in the country illegally.

Crackdown on protesters

The administration opened investigations into whether five universities properly handled allegations of antisemitism in February.

According to documents and three attorneys with the Office for Civil Rights, Education Department political appointees told the attorneys handling the cases to ask the schools for the names and nationalities of protesters against Israel's war in Gaza.

Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, Craig Trainor, when asked why the department was seeking the data on protesters and whether it related to immigration, said the information was necessary to assess how the universities handled the antisemitism cases.

His statement did not directly address the question of deportations.