Trump admin refuses to produce high-ranking official to testify about controversial use of 'death master file'
Source: Law & Crime
Apr 15th, 2025, 11:49 am
The Trump administration had rejected a federal judge’s request to make the acting Social Security Administration (SSA) commissioner available for a hearing on whether to issue a preliminary injunction barring the agency from granting the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to the personally identifiable information of millions of Americans.
The decision to prevent acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek from testifying comes on the heels of the administration adding more than 6,000 living migrants to the SSA’s “death master file” — effectively canceling their social security number — in an effort to force them to self-deport.
The death master file is used to keep track of individuals who die and should no longer receive benefits. The migrants who were recently added to the list had been in the U.S. legally, but had their status revoked by the administration, according to reporting from The New York Times. The repurposing of the list would leave the “financial lives” of those on it “terminated,” Dudek reportedly wrote in an email to staff.
Attorneys for the Justice Department on Monday informed U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander of Maryland that instead of allowing Dudek to testify, they will “rest their opposition to Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction on the information contained in briefing, stated at oral argument, and in the administrative record produced by the Social Security Administration.”
Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/unheard-of-and-improper-trump-admin-refuses-to-produce-high-ranking-official-to-testify-about-controversial-use-of-death-master-file-in-pressuring-migrants-to-self-deport/
Full headline: ‘Unheard of and improper’: Trump admin refuses to produce high-ranking official to testify about controversial use of ‘death master file’ in pressuring migrants to self-deport
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Everything they're doing is illegal. 
