Elon Musk and social security efforts to contain illegal immigration

A trademark of Elon Musks in the government was his focus on social security.

He sent one of his closest consultants to work with the social security management. He incorrectly insisted that the program is full of fraud. And he has shown the claim as a tool – as a “huge magnet” in order to be specific, that he says that illegal immigrants come to the United States.

This last part has made social security an important focus of Musk’s unfounded belief that Democrats have allowed immigrants to the United States as part of a system in order to tilt the electorate in its favor.

A team of my colleagues reported that Musk is now driving major changes in the social security administration that have braided the aspects of his rhetoric directly into the guideline through the agency. The agency places certain immigrants – people who are very alive – on the list of the dead of the agency and cut them off from crucial financial services to get them leaving the country.

I called my colleague Alexandra Berzon to talk about this reporting, and she explained that the targeted migrants had not received much of state benefits after their own bookkeeping of the White House – and none of them received social security.

She explained that the new effort is less about reducing costs than to bring social security management into the business with the enforcement of immigration, a pressure that deeply worries the current and former employees of the agency.

Explain to me what you and our colleagues have discovered in the reporting on this story. How does the Trump administration use social security as an instrument for immigration policy?

Social security maintains a so -called “Death Master file” to ensure that the social security numbers for the deceased are not used for identity fraud and something like this. Every year they add around three million people to this list, whose death they pursue with the help of state records, funeral companies and family families. This list is also distributed by the Ministry of Commerce and is used by financial institutions, mortgage companies, insurance companies, credit card companies, banks and others who frequently close or suspend the accounts of people who are considered dead. If people wrongly land on this list, it’s a nightmare.

Now the Department of Homeland Security sends certain migrant names to social security management to be added to the list as if they were dead. They think that this will make people so difficult that they will give themselves. You name the “Death Master File” the “Unexpected Masters File”.

Who exactly was added to this list?

The original memos that have set up this – from Kristi Noem, the secretary of the home protection, to Leland Dudek, the incumbent commissioner of the social security agency – described two categories of people: migrants, the alleged terrorists and those who are convicted criminals. We found out this week that 6,300 people, the government says, they fell into these categories. These were temporarily into the country who were let into the country and have given the social security numbers who have now revoked their status. Officials said that the efforts for others could involve themselves in the country without permission.

Musk has spoken a lot about the idea that illegal immigrants are attracted to this country to achieve social security benefits. Is there any evidence that migrants actually achieved social security benefits on this list?

Immigrants pay in the social security system and you usually don’t get any advantages of this, so that you actually contribute to the system. It is the opposite of what Muschus said. There are some limited advantages that certain immigrants – those who are authorized to work and consequently have social security numbers – are justified according to certain periods. As far as we know, these are not big numbers.

At the end of yesterday, an official from the White House sent us a list of the advantages that these people had received. They said that around 1,000 people from this group of around 6,300 medicaid, unemployment benefits or student loans were collected. When we recorded everything, these advantages were the advantages that the advantages received, an average of around 600 US dollars per person – none of them were social security benefits.

So it is true that some of the people set to the list of death have provided the federal benefits. However, there is no evidence that these people have actually used social security coffers.

Our conversation was processed for length and clarity.

Agency report

What would Trump do with a large cost reduction option that bids preferred?

Health executives have identified in the past two years, which they see as the main goal for the cost reduction in Medicaid: a little-known medical product called skin replacement. I asked Sarah Kliff, a reporter for investigative health care in the New York Times, to explain how the Trump government is approaching an opportunity to reduce government spending on this product.

Small sets are small bandages that are often made of dehydrated placenta. There are some evidence that you can help heal certain stubborn wounds, especially those that can get people with diabetes on the soles of the feet.

The reimbursement of Medicare for skin replacement has increased from $ 1.6 billion in 2022 to $ 10 billion in 2024 in 2024.

My colleague Katie Thomas and I reported a driver of expenditure growth this week: Doctors have strong financial incentives to use skin replacement. Companies sell these bandages with a discount to doctors, but the doctors charge Medicare the full sticker price and are the difference. We had legal experts some contracts and they discovered language that could hide setbacks.

Katie and I partially wrote our story because the Trump administration was faced with an important period. Medicare had to decide by April 13 whether a plan of the bidue era to restrict the cover of the skin replacement. The plan would limit the cover for products that had no good evidence that shows that they have worked.

When we wrote our story, we weren’t sure where the administration would end up. On the one hand, we knew that President Trump had criticized the bidding plan on social media and that his campaign had received a large donation from one of the largest skin replacement companies. On the other hand, we knew that he made the government’s disguise to issue a festival destination for his second administration. Experts in health food foods told us that skin substitutes could be the largest example of waste in Medicare’s history.

We received our answer this morning: The Trump administration will not put the bidges rule into force. Instead, they delay it by 2026, leave dozens of unproven products on the market and entitle them to reimbursement of Medicare.

– Sarah Kliff

Meanwhile on x

Defense of a musk defender

After his standards, Musk was relatively quiet on X. But my colleague Ryan Mac noticed that he used his account to promote a Trump ally that occurred for him. Here is more.

Weeks has made Ed Martin, a right-wing extremist elections that Trump has appointed the US lawyer in Washington, DC, defends the actions of Muschus and his Ministry of Government Efficiency.

Musk replied a favor.

On Friday, the billionaire used his X account to get the Senate to approve Martin’s nomination, and answered another post with “Confirm Ed Martin!” It is the second time in less than a month that he has expressed his support for Martin, who was an advocate of the rioters on January 6th and headed the office that she pursued.

Martin presented himself as a willing attack dog for musk and Doge. In February he sent a letter to his X account, which was addressed to Musk, in which he threatened to “pursue all legal steps against someone” who disabled Musk’s work with Doge. After the news organizations had started, this was disclosed by the identity of some of the people involved in the cost reduction.

Four days later, Martin published a second note with the inscription that he would open an inquiry after he would receive a transfer from Musk “from individuals and networks, the apparently government property and/or threat of government agents”.

When Martin is waiting for confirmation, the Democrats of the Senate Justice Committee, who hold a hearing to his nomination, cited his letters to Musk as justification.

– Ryan Mac

According to the numbers

150 billion US dollars

This is the amount of government spending that Musk has up to date during a meeting of Trump’s cabinet in a budget year to reduce the federal budget in a budget year. His earlier gate was 1 trillion dollar in cuts.