DOGE Track

Immigration Surveillance

In September 2025, reporting revealed that the tech company Palantir had won a contract to build a tool called ImmigrationOS, which was designed to track immigration and deportation. This was followed more recently by reports the company is building another tool named ELITE to help ICE map the addresses of people to arrest for deportation. We know these products exist because they were federal procurements, which are public in nature. What we don’t know as clearly is all the work that DOGE has been doing to make these system viable.

These projects work by combining data sourced from federal data systems at the IRS and Medicaid and Social Security Administration, as well as other data purchased from data brokers to give a “god’s eye” view of anybody who could be targeted by ICE. This nightmare scenario is exactly what The Privacy Act of 1974 was passed to prevent. But DOGE has generally operated as if the Privacy Act does not exist, and its missteps in identify fraud don’t inspire confidence that they won’t make egregious errors in trying to combine information from various systems that were not meant to be used this way. These errors will be compounded as DOGE also tries to incorporate election data into its systems and push wider use of SAVE as a verification tool.

There have been efforts to slow this unholy conglomeration in the courts. Agency staff have protested the illegality of data sharing, usually to be suspended and side-lined. Challenges in the courts have had some success, but have been countered by the Supreme Court. Ultimately, it will be up to Congress to eventually rein in these abuses, and by then they’ll have harmed countless lives.

System Access

Name Description
ELIS acts as a case management system for USCIS and includes information about green cards and petitions, as well as details related to Temporary Protected Status and DACA applicants
DOJ
A system used by DOJ for tracking the status of immigration cases
Adam Hoffman (4/21)
Marko Elez (4/21)
Jon Koval (4/21)
DOL
This newly-modernized portal will help U.S. employers find qualified workers while ensuring protections for U.S. and foreign workers.
Aram Moghaddassi (4/18, admin access)
CMS
A data warehouse that receives all Medicare claims after they have been approved for payment
Luke Farritor (2/18)
Marko Elez (3/05)
Zach Terrell (3/11)
SSA
A large record of all individuals elgible to receive social security benefits
Jon Koval (3/17)
Marko Elez (3/17)
HHS
A system for tracking wages and new hires that's used for child support location
Marko Elez (3/06/25-4/18/25)
Aram Moghaddassi (3/06/25-4/18/25)
DOL
System for a nationally-directed, locally-administered program of services for migrant and seasonal farmworkers and their dependents
Miles Collins (4/18)
DOL
The Job Corps program helps eligible young people ages 16 through 24 complete their high school education, trains them for meaningful careers, and assists them with obtaining employment. Job Corps has trained and educated over two million individuals since 1964. DOGE may have been initially been interested in this system as part of its fraud investigations, but it could be valuable for surveillance on immigrants.
Miles Collins (3/20)
DOL
System which tracks funding provided for justice-involved youth and young adults and adults who were formerly incarcerated.
Miles Collins (4/18)
Marko Elez (4/18)
SSA
A master record used by the SSA for the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program
Jon Koval (3/17)
Marko Elez (3/17)
SSP
An online service for agencies to verify immigration status and naturalized/acquired U.S. citizenship of applicants seeking benefits or licenses.
USCIS: Marko Elez (3/15)
HHS
The UC Portal manages all medical (mental and dental health included), educational, and sponsorship information for UC in ORR custody
Kyle Schutt (3/21)
DOL
Unemployment insurance claims data from states' unemployment insurance agencies. This was explicitly transferred from the Inspector General's office at DOL following a 2025-03-20 executive order
Marko Elez (3/21)
Date Event
2/16/25
Source
The White House pressures the IRS to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) granting DOGE expanded access to internal systems at the agency containing confidential taxpayer information.
2/18/25
Source
A federal judge denied an attempt by American Federation of Teachers et al v. Bessent et al (D. Md.) to block DOGE from accessing Department of Education systems related to financial aid.
2/19/25
Source
Trump issues an executive order EO 14218 “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders” that instructs USDS to work with agencies to identify federal funding for immigrants and build up eligibility verification systems
2/20/25
Source
The White House and Treasury Department come to an agreement for a Memorandum of Understanding about how DOGE access to IRS systems will be structured.
2/21/25
Source
The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the IRS and DOGE is formally signed. It reportedly will not let DOGE access individual tax returns.
2/21/25
Source
Several DOGE staff at HHS and DOI are involved in a large meeting related to a contract with the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within HHS. Among other systems, this office maintains the Unaccompanied Children Portal, which was of interest to DOGE’s immigration focus.
 Tyler Hassen, Rachel Riley, Katrine Trampe
2/24/25
Source
In a ruling for American Federation of Teachers et al v. Bessent et al (D. Md.), a judge declared “DOGE affiliates have been granted access to systems of record that contain some of the plaintiffs’ most sensitive data - Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, income and assets, citizenship status, and disability status - and their access to this trove of personal information is ongoing”
2/28/25
Source
Gavin Kliger and Sam Corcos, DOGE representatives embedded at the IRS, on Friday asked IRS lawyers to assist in creating an “omnibus” agreement with other federal agencies that would allow a broad swath of federal officials to cross-reference benefits rolls with taxpayer data.
March 2025
3/XX/25
Source
Aram Moghaddassi writes to Florida officials to state “we’re working on SAVE access for Florida law enforcement now.” He also requests information from Florida, claiming that ICE “has several leads on non-citizen voting in Florida and would like to work with Florida to investigate and prosecute these cases.”
3/03/25
Source
DOGE staff attempt to access NDNH, “a system within a broader government database created to help enforce child support payments, which pulls a vast trove of information, including income data linked to nearly all workers,” potentially as an alternative data source for the data they wanted to pull from the IRS. This attempt is refused by agency staff.
3/03/25
Source
An unidentified member of the DOGE team at the SSA emailed a password-protected and encrypted file to DHS but also included Steve Davis at DOGE and an unidentified DOGE team member at the Department of Labor (possibly Marko Elez or Aram Moghaddassi who were detailed to SSA from DOL). SSA staff believes it contained sensitive PII of approximately 1000 individuals, but the Chief Information Office has been unable to determine more. Notably, the CIO role for SSA has been held by a rotation of several DOGE staffers since February.
3/07/25
Source
Starting from this data and continuing until March 17, members of the DOGE team at SSA were using servers at Cloudflare to share SSA data (the exact product is not identified, but it could be the D1 system for SQL databases). Needless to say, Cloudflare is not approved by SSA for storing sensitive data, and SSA staff have been unable to determine what data was shared and if it is still hosted on Cloudflare systems.
3/08/25
Source
The federal staff who objected to DOGE getting access to NDNH are “no longer with the agency”
3/20/25
Source
President Trump issues an executive order demaning that agency heads must share all access to any unclassified datasets “related to the identification and elimination of waste, fraud, and abuse.” This is potentially in violation of the Privacy Act, so the order leaves it to individual agency staff to determine what sharing is allowed “to the maximum extent consistent with law.”
3/20/25
Source
Trump issues an executive order EO 14243 which explicitly includes an instruction that “the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary’s designees shall receive, to the maximum extent consistent with law, unfettered access to all unemployment data and related payment records, including all such data and records currently available to the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General.”
3/21/25
Source
The Trump administration eliminates the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and two ombudsman offices responsible for investigating allegations of abuse from immigrants. This also includes the CRCL program that was characterized as “money laundering” by DOGE staffer Kyle Schutt.
3/24/25
Source
Ruling in American Federation of Teachers et al v. Bessent et al, Judge Boardman issues a preliminary injunction against to internal systems at the Departoment of Education by DOGE staff and the Acting Secretary where the justification for access was “the DOGE agenda” (i.e., all of them)
3/24/25
Source
After members of an unidentified political advocacy group contacted two members of the DOGE team at SSA, one of the DOGE members signed a Voter Data Agreement to share data. The group was looking for data to accuse states of fraud to overturn election results. The DOGE team member did not consult SSA lawyers or follow any mandatory clearance procedures for sharing data with outside entities. It is unclear if they sent data, but the two employees were referred for investigation of violating the Hatch Act in December 2025, which forbids government officials from partisan political activities.
c.3/25/25
Source
At a meeting on data sharing, an official from ICE requests that the IRS should create a service where DHS staff could simply provide the names and states of potential targets and get a list of all applicable addresses. IRS lawyers are stunned by the possible illegality and continued pressure leads to a series of resignations among staff in legal, privacy and IT offices within the IRS.
3/25/25
Source
Within a large executive order (EO 14248) about voting, Trump orders DOGE “to review each State’s publicly available voter registration list and available records concerning voter list maintenance activities.”
April 2025
4/02/25
Source
In an interview on Fox, Antonio Gracias makes misleading claims that DOGE had discovered widespread voting fraud through joining social security data and state voter rolls.
4/07/25
Source
The IRS and DHS execute a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for data sharing between both agencies. Although DOGE is not named specifically in this agreement, ICE is allowed to designate authorized individuals to access the shared data. AI usage must also be reviewed first by the IRS.
4/07/25
Source
After some qualms about its legality, Leland Dudek signs two memos authorizing sharing data from the Social Security Administration that would allow DHS and ICE to locate immigrants who had been paying taxes to Social Security (despite not being able to collect it).
 Leland Dudek
4/08/25
Source
DOGE engineers kick off a hackathon at IRS with some senior IRS developers and representatives of the company Palantir to create a “Mega API” of IRS data.
4/08/25
Source
Aram Moghaddassi adds 6300 names of suspected immigrants to the “death master file” as a way of forcing them to “self-deport” by making it impossible to use financial products. This list included the names of 7 minors.
4/09/25
Source
Adam Ramada and Brooks Morgan are part of a cohort of 9 staffers detailed from the Department of Education to the Treasury, under the aegis of supporting federal student aid functions at Treasury.
4/10/25
Source
Greg Pearre, a senior career executive overseeing technologists at the SSA, is forced out of his office by security guards after clashing with CIO Scott Coulter and calling his plan to forcibly declare immigrants dead both illegal and cruel
4/10/25
Source
102 more names of living people are added to the Master Death File at SSA to destroy their ability to participate in society and to “self-deport” as a result.
4/11/25
Source
Politico profiles a DOGE immigration task force that is located within DHS but has contacts with DOGE staff at other agencies. It includes multiple DOGE staffers detailed from various agencies.
 Edward Coristine, Marko Elez, Antonio Gracias, Aram Moghaddassi, Payton Rehling, Kyle Schutt
4/12/25?
Source
The Social Security Administration shares sensitive information on 100,000 people with DHS, including their addresses, social security numbers, birth and death dates and bank information. Leland Dudek reports this request was made via a phone call late on a Saturday night with the justification that it was needed for a criminal investigation. (fuzz: Date isn’t given, assuming this is after Leland Dudek signed data sharing agreement, but it’s possible agreement was retroactive cover)
4/15/25
Source
Michael Mirski is named as leading a DOGE effort at HUD to identify and target households that include undocumented immigrants. These could then be referred to the surveillance system that is being built by DOGE at DHS for immigration enforcement.
4/18/25
Source
Multiple federal staffers who handle sensitive data related to migrant workers are placed on leave for raising objections about DOGE gaining access to those data systems to target that population for arrest and deportation.
4/18/25
Source
Some immigrants have been forced to prove they aren’t dead after being added to the Master Death File in an attempt to force them to “self-deport.” The White House had falsely claimed nobody was really declared dead.
4/23/25
Source
DOGE has reportedly added 10 million records into the Death Master File since March, both as part of addressing errors in the NUMIDENT files as well as deliberate effort to harm immigrants from being able to interact with the financial industry. As a reuslt, some very alive Americans have been declared dead by DOGE.
May 2025
5/06/25
Source
The Department of Agriculture sends a letter to the state directors of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program citing EO 14243 which grants DOGE unfettered access to federal and state data and demanding they turn over data on recipients dating back to 2020-01-01 or face consequences.
5/06/25
Source
DOGE staff are reportedly working within the Office of Biometric Management (OBIM) at DHS which oversees the biometric systems IDENT and HART, giving them access to the largest database of biometric identifiers in the world.
5/12/25
Source
The Department of Homeland Security issues a subpoena to the state of California and Los Angeles County to demand records from a cash assistance program for immigrants (CAPI).
5/22/25
Source
Brian Broderick of USCIS joins a call of the election committee of the National Association of Secretaries of State to expand the SAVE database to also include driver license and passport information.
5/23/25
Source
In a podcast appearance, Antonio Gracias reported that the Department of Justice had requested for DOGE to find “10-20 cases” of alleged noncitizen voting in every state.
 Antonio Gracias
5/27/25
Source
A glimpse of Luke Farritor’s visible calendar in a Fox News DOGE profile includes a meeting with a representative from the Department of Justice and another from the FBI. (fuzz: It’s unclear what agency Farritor is representing here, but assuming it’s DOL since other events were there.)
 Luke Farritor
June 2025
6/XX/25
Source
A lawyer at ICE proposes expanding the original data sharing MOU between the agency to also support requesting data on US citizens and lawful permanent residents (it had been limited to undocumented immigrants previously). Anthony DeMello rejected this change at the IRS and insisted that senior leadership at Treasury would have to sign off on this due to possible legal risks. (fuzz: meeting date not given)
6/06/25
Source
Several senior staff write a memo to agency leadership reporting that California, Washington and Illinois had cooperated with EO 14243 requesting info on their state’s Medicaid programs. They strenously object to a plan to share this data with DHS, noting that it would violate the privacy act and other laws as well as agency practices, and that it could be used to identify and target immigrant communities in those states.
6/06/25
Source
In a 6-3 ruling on an emergency application, the Supreme Court rejected an injunction that prevented DOGE from accessing Social Security data. In a setback for privacy advocates, this will allow for SSA to share data with DOGE and other agencies, while the case about the legality of that proceeds.
6/06/25
Source
Medicaid staff at CMS are ordered by CMS and HHS leadership to immediately share with DHS data from Medicaid program in certain states that allow non-US citizens to be enrolled. This information could be used by ICE to target and deport immigrants who are legally collecting state benefits.
6/10/25
Source
John Solly asks staff in the Social Security Administration’s CIO office (then possibly under the leadership of Scott Coulter or Aram Moghaddassi) to create a cloud environment to upload the NUMIDENT data to. The stated reason was purported reason for the project was to improve the way that SSA exchanges data.
6/25/25
Source
Although he was considered more friendly to the Trump admininstration and DOGE, Andrew DeMello, the acting general counsel for the IRS refuses to turn over the addresses of 7.3 million taxpayers that had been requested by ICE. He declares there are multiple legal “deficiencies” with the request that do not meet the legal safeguards that were listed in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for this process, which declared that such data could only be shared for open criminal investigations.
6/27/25
Source
Two days after preventing a data sharing request from ICE due to legal issues, the acting counself for the IRS is fired and removed from his job.
6/27/25
Source
Ruling in the case AFL-CIO v. DOL, Judge Bates determines that he cannot issue a preliminary injunction that would prevent DOGE staffers from accessing sensitive systems at DOL and HHS. DOGE access was never suspended by this case.
July 2025
7/10/25
Source
HHS issues a press release announces that it is cracking down on ensuring that benefits are not being provided to undocumented immigrants, including Head Start among its list of programs that will be receiving greater scrutiny. This policy shift will also likely be used to justify increased information sharing between HHS and ICE.
7/15/25
Source
Reporting on DOGE’s efforts to import IRS data into immigration enforcement databases, ProPublica reports that 7.3 million addresses requested by ICE have still not yet been shared with the agency by the IRS. IRS staff do not believe that ICE has 7 million open investigations and are concerned that outdated or inaccurate information in the dataset could lead to false arrests and detentions. However, IRS is still building this system and is targeting a late July launch date.
7/16/25
Source
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Access (CMS) within HHS have reportedly signed a deal to deliver information on all 79 million enrollees in Medicaid to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This information, which includes the addresses and ethnicities of enrollees, will supercharge a surveillance machine assembled by DOGE that is being used by ICE to arrest undocumented immigrants (and others).
August 2025
8/03/25
Source
At least 19 states confirm that the Department of Justice has requested their voter registration lists and records from the 2024 and 2020 elections. At least seven states have reported that DOJ proposed an information-sharing agreement related to election fraud. States have not traditionally shared such information in the past, and there are concerns that this will be used in a fishing expedition for crimes or that the data will not be properly protected. This effort echoes an assertion in May by Antion Gracias that DOJ had asked DOGE to find “10-20 cases of alleged noncitizen voting in every state.”
8/08/25
Source
The IRS Commissioner, Billy Long, is reportedly ousted by the Trump Administration after refusing to fully comply with a DHS request for confidential taxpayer information on 40,000 names of suspected undocumented immigrants. This request was for addresses as well as if they had claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income filers. Long announced he will be nominated to be the US Ambassador to Iceland, making him the sixth IRS commissioner to leave or be removed from the agency this year. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will run the agency in an acting capacity.
8/08/25
Source
The IRS begins sharing more sensitive data on taxpayers. Under the agreement with DHS, IRS had promised to share information on taxpayers under active criminal investigation, but DHS then requested information on 1.23 million individuals. The IRS was only able to return information on less than 5% of this request, angering the Trump White House and reportedly leading to Long’s dismissal.
8/12/25
Source
Citing a Supreme Court shadow docket ruling as precedent, a DC Appeals Court overturned a stay from February and ordered that DOGE should be allowed to access sensitive data at the Treasury Department, OPM and Department of Education.
September 2025
9/17/25
Source
The Department of Justice files a lawsuit against Maine and Oregon for refusing to comply with EO 14248, an executive order that demanded that states must share unredacted voter registration lists with the federal government. Multiple states have refused to comply, citing both the questionable legality of the order as well as concerns about privacy. This data will also likely be imported into a DOGE project to look for voting fraud that could exaggerate the problem and cast doubts on the integrity of US elections
9/19/25
Source
A GSA-created “ICE surge team” that was formed to rapidly lease office space for ICE to operate in various cities is reportedly struggling due to the effects of DOGE cuts – despite overwhelming work, the team is only half the size it should be due to DOGE staffing cuts and is often forced to rent back space at elevated rates from landlords who were harmed by DOGE’s lease-cancellation efforts.
9/25/25
Source
The DOJ files a lawsuit against five more states – Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, and New Hampshire – that refused to turn over full and unredacted voter registration information for the past two elections to the DOJ. This order was mandated in EO 14248, but it’s unclear that the President has any constitutional authority to demand such cooperation from the states. This data likely will be aggregated into a DOGE-created system to look in voter registration data for fraud, raising concerns that erroneous claims will be used to undermine elections.
9/30/25
Source
Several nonprofit organizations led by the League of Women Voters filed a lawsuit against the DOGE-led project to add Social Security data and expand the usage of the SAVE database for invalidating voter registrations. The suit alleges that this process violated the Privacy Act but also is an unconstitutional abridgement of state ownership for elections.
October 2025
10/17/25
Source
The Trump Administration announces plans for a digital version of the existing federal voter registration form that would be created by the National Design Studio and would run voter identity and citizenship checks against SAVE and other DHS systems before allowing voters to register. States of course have their own voter registration processes but have accepted the paper federal registration form as well. Notes from the call with National Association of State Election Directors reported that election officials from both parties expressed concern about this plan not complying with state laws. They also reported “the developers do not seem to want to spend the time to understand election official concerns.”
10/23/25
Source
Seeking to further bolster support for its proposed new voter registration tool that would be integrated with DHS databases, the Election Assistance Commission hosts a call with the National Association of Secretaries of State. Akash Bobba speaks on the call as a developer and reports it will be created by the National Design Studio and integrate with the revamped SAVE database from DHS. When asked for details about data retention and security, Bobba could only state that “clear data retention policies” would be provided to states in advance.
November 2025
11/25/25
Source
CMS publishes a notice in the Federal Register that it intends to share information on suspected undocumented immigrants with ICE, using Medicaid data that has been sourced to the agency from states. Multiple states have sued CMS over a previous order mandating these data-sharing arrangements, precisely because they were concerned about how the data might be used.
December 2025
12/02/25
Source
The DOJ files a lawsuit against six more states – Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington – for refusing to provide sweeping voting data to the administration, including full names, residential addresses, birth dates, driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of Social Security numbers.
IT/AI
Exec Orders