The Trump administration is utilizing federal, state, and local databases more extensively than ever before to collect information on undocumented immigrants in the U.S. that could be used for deportations, a recent report reveals.
And another report out Tuesday found that immigration criminal prosecutions have increased during the Trump administration.
“The access to and communication between various data repositories — which include sensitive details about taxes, health, benefit usage, and addresses for all U.S. residents — enables U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other authorities to gather, exchange, and share extensive data,” states a report released on May 29 by the Migration Policy Institute.
“The purpose of accessing government and commercial databases seems to be twofold: to attempt to facilitate large-scale arrests and deportations of deportable noncitizens, and to create a climate of fear prompting others to ‘self deport,'” the MPI report mentions.
The Trump administration’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency, launched by Elon Musk, has led in what the report calls a “data-leveraging mission accessing sensitive databases across government agencies and breaking down long-standing silos erected for operational and privacy reasons.”
The Migration Policy Institute is an independent, non-partisan nonprofit think tank that specializes in analyzing and researching immigration issues.
Information gathered includes from databases never before used for large-scale immigration enforcement, like voter information, the report finds.
DOGE has gained access to immigration databases including:
- Immigration courts – operated under the Executive Office for Immigration Review as well as the Courts and Appeals System database which contains information — like names, addresses and court testimony — on noncitizens who come before immigration courts.
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services – including the agency’s Data Business Intelligence Services system, which lists information on noncitizens who have applied for naturalization, refugee or asylee status, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), or Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
- Department of Health and Human Services — Unaccompanied Alien Children portal, which contains information on unaccompanied minors who have crossed the border and are under HHS care, as well as their sponsors.
- Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
- Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, sometimes known as food stamps)
- Social Security Administration (SSA)
- U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
- U.S. Education Department
- U.S. Postal Service
“Of these agencies and offices, DOGE has asked for information that could be used for immigration enforcement, such as immigration status, home address, and work address,” MPI says.
Legal challenges have been filed to block DOGE from accessing data from the IRS and SSA.
The MPI report notes that the Trump administration has not indicated the degree to which any arrests or deportations have been carried out as a result of this increase in data.
However, a report out Tuesday by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse finds that immigration prosecutions jumped 36% in March from February.
TRAC found U.S. attorneys charged 4,550 defendants with immigration offenses in U.S. District Courts in March, up from 3,332 defendants charged in February.
Immigration prosecutions, however, remain far below the highs they reached during the first Trump administration, TRAC found.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.
