Musk’s workforce began by trying to find cost-savings in federal authorities. Today they’re DOGE the immigrant hunters | EUROtoday

What was first bought to the American individuals as a cost-cutting mission to “eliminate waste” and save taxpayer cash, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has morphed into in search of immigration information, specialists and campaigners say.

Musk’s so-called DOGE group has moved at breakneck velocity for the reason that billionaire first mused about it in August 2024, shortly after endorsing Donald Trump for president.

“I think it would be great to just have a government efficiency commission,” Musk pitched to Trump through the dialog on X Spaces final summer season. Its goal, he stated, could be to make sure taxpayer cash is spent “in a good way.”

“And I’d be happy to help out on such a commission,” Musk provided.

Since then, DOGE has overseen a number of the 280,000 layoffs throughout 27 authorities companies and pursued immigration-related information throughout departments, together with Housing and Urban Development, the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration.

Its newest information mining conquest is the Justice Department, the place DOGE officers have accessed a delicate system containing detailed details about immigrants’ interactions with the U.S. authorities.

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The system, the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Courts and Appeals System, comprises data relationship to not less than the Nineteen Nineties on thousands and thousands of authorized and undocumented immigrants, together with addresses, case histories, court docket testimony and confidential interviews from asylum seekers, the Washington Post first reported.

“The initial mission, as stated, was to cut waste and eliminate fraud and abuse,” Lisa Gilbert, co-president of shopper rights group Public Citizen, which is concerned in a number of lawsuits in opposition to the Trump administration, informed The Independent. “And very quickly it became clear that that was not their goal.”

“I don’t think anyone could have predicted the pace and destructive nature of Elon Musk–helmed, conflict-ridden, tech-bro-filled, density storming into the federal government,” Gibert added. “It’s been unprecedented and hugely damaging, and it will take a long time for the government to recover.”

Musk’s workforce is utilizing the extremely delicate information it has gathered to construct a “master database” on the Department of Homeland Security that may very well be used to “track and surveil” undocumented immigrants, WIRED reported final week.

Data sharing between authorities companies is nothing new, nevertheless it has been restricted to particular functions. “DHS has had access to certain components of Department of Justice information through an interagency scheduling tool, which allowed border agents to pull court dates to put on charging documents, or evidence for deportation proceedings,” Kathleen Bush-Joseph, coverage analyst on the Migration Policy Institute, defined.

“What seems to be new, if reporting is accurate, is [DOGE’s] access to information contained in the actual case files,” she informed The Independent. Bush-Joseph emphasised the extremely delicate nature of the information, which in some circumstances will include data to do with “terrible violence and persecution” that some immigrants have suffered.

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“The opaqueness of DOGE’s data efforts should give Americans pause because it is not simply about creating efficiency,” world safety and cyber professional Nicholas Reese, an adjunct teacher at NYU’s School of Professional Studies Center for Global Affairs, added. “It is also about security and building trust because this is not nameless and faceless data.”

The Justice Department declined to remark when approached by The Independent. The White House and the Department of Homeland Security had been additionally contacted for remark.

Gerald Connolly, rating Democratic member of the House Oversight Committee, wrote to the Social Security Administration’s workplace of the inspector common final week a few whistleblower who informed them that DOGE is constructing the “master database,” consisting of delicate information.

The Committee “received reports about troubling, fumbling efforts by DOGE to combine sensitive information held by SSA, the IRS, HHS, and other agencies into a single cross-agency master database,” Connolly’s letter stated. “I am concerned that DOGE is moving personal information across agencies without the notification required under the Privacy Act or related laws, such that the American people are wholly unaware their data is being manipulated in this way.”

A senior Homeland Security official, in the meantime, informed WIRED that DOGE is “trying to amass a huge amount of data” and “it has nothing to do with finding fraud or wasteful spending.”

Connolly informed The Independent that the way in which wherein DOGE is working, significantly with accessing immigration information, is deeply “alarming.”

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“The Trump-Musk Administration is infiltrating agencies and weaponizing the information they steal to target and attack America’s immigrant communities,” Connolly stated. “DOGE’s dystopian demand for the sensitive, personal data of millions of Americans and immigrants is alarming, especially as this Administration abducts and disappears people off our streets without due process — including immigrants with legal status — and in light of President Trump’s chilling admission that he plans to target American citizens, or ‘home growns,’ next.”

Gabe Lezra, coverage and advocacy director at State Democracy Defenders Action, informed The Independent that what’s taking place “should horrify every American.”

“The Trump–Musk regime sold DOGE to the American people as a way to cut costs and streamline government. What they actually created was Big Brother,” Lezra stated. “This isn’t just about giving bad actors in our own government access to deeply personal data – like your party registration, charitable givings, medical history, citizenship status, and financial records. It’s also because we cannot have confidence that DOGE can keep this database safe–particularly because malicious foreign actors will immediately make this database their number one target,” he added.

DOGE claims it has saved American taxpayers $160 billion to this point, however figures on its web site has been dogged by errors. Chaos has adopted the newly-formed workforce headed by Musk as DOGE dismantled and shuttered companies throughout the federal authorities. The billionaire at one level was so arms on that he mandated federal workers electronic mail the Office of Personnel Management 5 accomplishments each week as a “pulse check.” Some company heads ignored him.

Now DOGE is popping its consideration to the administration’s deportation efforts as Trump continues to push his sweeping anti-immigration agenda. But Musk’s involvement within the efforts seems to be slowing down as he introduced plans to step again subsequent week due to his stumbling Tesla income.

The way forward for DOGE is doubtful as Musk’s function is lowered, however specialists, however critics stated the harm is finished.

“Even if Musk is here less, Musk-ism is still with us,” Gilbert stated. “Policies and practices that they’ve put in place will continue.”