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immigrant rights
Beware the Trump-Musk Regime Weaponizing Social Security!
There is no Democratic Social Security and Republican Social Security. There is only one Social Security system that we all pay into and we all benefit from.
May 02, 2025
For nearly 90 years, the Social Security Administration has stood above the fray of partisan politics. The agency focused on its mission to deliver hard-earned benefits to every American, regardless of whom they voted for. Official communications channels, such as press releases, never endorsed or criticized a politician.
Indeed, the one time a president tried to politicize Social Security, he was forced to back down. Before benefits were automatically indexed to offset the rise in inflation, Congress would vote for increases that the president signed into law. Those benefits were accompanied by simple straightforward notices, stating that Congress had passed, and the president had signed into law, the enclosed increase.
Just prior to the 1972 election, President Richard Nixon explored the idea of substituting an insert with his signature and photo, hoping to imply that he alone was responsible for the increase (that, ironically, he in fact had opposed). The Social Security Commissioner threatened to publicly resign, and Nixon backed down.
Not only is the Trump-Musk regime lying to you, they are using your money to do it.
President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are throwing that long-standing tradition of neutrality in the trash. The Social Security Administration (SSA) announced that it would be posting its official announcements on Elon Musk’s for-profit social media platform, alongside the platform’s paid advertisements. Consistent with that declaration, SSA’s official account posted a thread to Musk’s platform, X, that began “Former President Joe Biden is lying to Americans.”
This thread was filled with misleading information and used offensive, politically charged language, including “illegal aliens.” Contrary to the thread’s implications, undocumented immigrants do not and cannot receive Social Security. In fact, SSA has determined that undocumented workers have been subsidizing the rest of us to the tune of $25 billion a year, since many of them contribute (under fake Social Security numbers) but never receive a penny of their earned benefits.
This is a wildly inappropriate use of SSA’s resources. Like the rest of SSA, the agency’s official communications are paid for by the American people’s Social Security contributions. Normally, SSA is very efficient, spending less than a penny of every dollar contributed on administrative expenses. But now, some of that money is being wasted and misused on politics. Not only is the Trump-Musk regime lying to you, they are using your money to do it.
Unfortunately, this is just one of many ways the Trump-Musk regime is weaponizing Social Security. After the governor of Maine publicly challenged Trump, Social Security canceled two contracts with her state.
The contracts, which the federal government has with every state, are extremely efficient and important. One of them allows parents to register their newborns for Social Security cards at the hospital, instead of dragging their babies to overcrowded field offices. The other quickly transmits when anyone in the state has died, so benefits can be immediately terminated.
To punish the governor of Maine, the Trump administration decided to punish the parents of newborns. After massive public outrage, the Trump administration was forced to reinstate the contracts.
Trump and Musk could declare people dead because they are political enemies, or members of a disfavored group. They could extort people by threatening to declare them dead.
Leaked emails leave no doubt that the Trump-handpicked acting head of SSA, Leland Dudek, terminated the contracts as political revenge. An SSA employee told Dudek that terminating the contracts “would result in improper payments and potential for identity theft.” Dudek replied, “Please cancel the contracts. While our improper payments will go up, and fraudsters may compromise identities, no money will go from the public trust to a petulant child,” by whom he meant Maine Gov. Janet Mills.
Most chillingly of all, the Trump-Musk regime is illegally falsifying government data by adding people to Social Security’s death master file—despite knowing that they are still alive. Their initial targets are thousands of legal migrants, who have Social Security numbers so that they can work in the U.S.
When Social Security wrongly declares a living person dead, it ruins their life. Financial institutions, health insurance companies, and many other entities rely on Social Security’s data, and they react quickly when someone is declared dead. Imagine, in one keystroke from “Big Balls” or another Musk henchman, losing your income, your health insurance, access to your bank account, your credit cards, your home, and more. This is financial murder.
Legal migrants are the first victims, but if the Trump-Musk regime gets away with this, they will not be the last. Trump and Musk could declare people dead because they are political enemies, or members of a disfavored group. They could extort people by threatening to declare them dead.
All of this is particularly outrageous because Social Security is a nonpartisan program. Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike all value their Social Security benefits and want to see them expanded, not cut. There is no Democratic Social Security and Republican Social Security.
The American people’s message for Trump and Musk is simple: There is only one Social Security system that we all pay into and we all benefit from. Hands off.
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A May Day Letter to My Student Deportee
How the Berkeley Federation of Teachers and the wider community fought back against immigration injustice and won.
May 01, 2025
Dear “Cesar,”
This May Day, as I march with my union, the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, I will thank them for their role in making Berkeley Unified a sanctuary school district and Berkeley, a sanctuary city, but above all, I would like to thank you.
It’s been over 18 years since your last day in our second grade class—a heartbreaking Valentine’s Day in 2007—just before your family succumbed to a deportation order forcing you to leave the country, despite your U.S. citizenship.
This year, convicted felon and twice-impeached President Donald Trump’s Valentine’s Day present was to threaten all public schools and universities to desist in teaching about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or lose funding. He also issued executive orders illegally revoking visas, work permits, and even facilitating the arrest and detention of immigrants and their allies.
ICE tried to banish the family of one 7-year-old citizen, and the union and community came together in a powerful fist of defiance, protecting hundreds and inspiring other cities that followed our example.
Do you remember the now-censored “DEI” book about Cesar Chavez that I read to your class, Harvesting Hope by Kathleen Krull? She told the story of how the huge Chavez family lost their farm to the depression and drought that scourged Arizona in 1937. Some of you cried when you learned that the Chavez family was forced to trade their productive 80-acre finca for the life of migrant farm workers, developing lesions, blisters, knotted backs, and burning eyes and lungs.
But I reassured you: “No hay mal que por bien no venga.—There is nothing so bad that good can’t come of it.” Were it not for the Cesar family’s displacement, he might not have co-founded the United Farm Workers, a union that has saved countless farm workers’ lives, improved working conditions, and inspired multitudes internationally. Similarly, your family’s suffering gave birth to change and hope in the city you were forced to abandon and beyond.
For years I’ve waited until you were old enough to understand my recounting of the resistance leading to the safeguards you inspired. After you left, your classmates and I would tear up looking at your name on your mailbox and your empty seat. I fought against tears every time we said the Rosa Parks Pledge: “to make this world a better place for ALL people to enjoy freedom,” because ALL didn’t include you.
Your mother wrote from Mexico that you had transformed from my cheerful, round-cheeked model student into a sullen malnourished child who refused to do his school work or eat. I could not stop crying.
Inspired by the ironic letters of my parents’ close friend Blacklist-breaking screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, I wrote an Open Letter to an Immigration Judge:
Dear Honorable Immigration Judge,
…how can I go on teaching about equal rights and freedom of speech and all the things our Constitution is supposed to defend, and that the very name of our school is supposed to represent, when the father of my students is deported simply because his skin is darker? Both my Latine and white students are U.S. citizens. So how do I explain to the class that one has the right to a family in the United States and the other citizen does not?
The letterwentviral. A community faith organization called BOCA helped my student teacher and me organize an informational event April 26 with cafeteria tables full of lawyers offering free advice. Rosa Parks’ families pressured the superintendent and police to protect immigrant students. With BOCA’s assistance, as a BFT union representative, I wrote and presented a resolution to the BFT executive board to make BUSD a sanctuary district and it passed overwhelmingly.
Meanwhile your classmates heroically transformed their grief into actions by writing their own “Without You” poems based on Los Panchos’ “Sin Ti” song and read them on an Univision TV special about you.
Next, my spouse and I pulled the best elements of sanctuary ordinances around the country together into a local ordinance and presented it to Berkeley’s Peace and Justice Commission. It won unanimous support and was recommended to the City Council. On May 22, 2007 we organized a rally outside city hall in favor of our beefed up sanctuary ordinance. Aided by the BFT, many of BFT’s Spanish two-way immersion teachers, KPFA host Larry Bensky, LeConte’s principal, and the Berkeley community, the rally reverberated through the City Council chambers. Berkeley Resolution City of Refuge 63711-N.S. was adopted that night (5-22-07) giving a previously symbolic resolution the teeth of law. Berkeley’s spark of an example ignited other cities that adopted similar ordinances throughout the nation. Months later, BFT president Cathy Campbell got our School Board to adopt our sanctuary District resolution as board policy.
Over the years, this work has only gained strength.This January 21, Berkeley School Board Member Jen Corn submitted an even stronger resolution to the City Council reaffirming Berkeley’s status as a sanctuary city and it passed overwhelmingly again. And in February, teachers, principals, office workers, and support staff received a two hour training on how to safeguard the rights of our immigrant students. This whole sequence of events began when you, “Cesar,” my polite, photogenic, straight-A, bilingual 7-year-old student, became the poster child of a renewed movement to protect immigrant rights in Berkeley.
So today, as Donald Trump outdoes predecessors in figuratively defiling our Statue of Liberty, Mother of Exiles, thanks to you,“Cesar,” so many more of us are able to defend her call for our “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” ICE tried to banish the family of one 7-year-old citizen, and the union and community came together in a powerful fist of defiance, protecting hundreds and inspiring other cities that followed our example. Fear feeds tyranny, but you and our union showed us how community and courage can construct democracy. And no matter what challenges we may face now, there is no going back.
As Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) said,
Once social change begins it cannot be reversed.
One cannot make illiterate those who have learned to read.
One cannot uneducate those who have learned to think.
One cannot humiliate those who feel pride.
One cannot oppress those who are no longer are afraid.
Thank you, to our Rosa Parks’ Cesar Chavez.
Love,
Maestra Margot
My student’s name has been changed to protect his privacy. He responded with a very moving note of gratitude, giving me permission to publish this letter.
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IRS Collaboration With ICE Threatens Its Core Mission
Using the IRS and its resources for immigration enforcement violates privacy laws and undermines public trust in the agency, impacting its ability to collect revenue.
Apr 13, 2025
Attempts by the Department of Homeland Security to secure private information from the Internal Revenue Service on people who file taxes with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number is a violation of federal privacy laws that protect taxpayers. It is also a change that could seriously damage public trust in the IRS, which could jeopardize billions of dollars in tax payments by hardworking immigrant families.
The recent memorandum of understanding between the IRS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—which led to the resignation of the Acting IRS Commissioner—establishes procedures for requesting taxpayer information under IRC section 6103(i)(2) for criminal investigations. But that section is clear: Taxpayer information is confidential unless Congress specifically authorizes disclosure. No such authorization exists for routine immigration enforcement.
Using the IRS and its resources for immigration enforcement is a departure from the agency’s core mission, which is to administer tax laws. What’s more, federal privacy law unambiguously protects all taxpayer information, meaning tax returns and taxpayer information must remain confidential except under very specific circumstances that do not include immigration enforcement. This weaponization should worry all filers, because if this can be done without congressional authorization then it can be done to other groups as well.
Every 10-percentage point drop in the income tax compliance rate of undocumented immigrants would lower federal tax revenue by $8.6 billion per year, and state and local tax collections by $900 million per year.
Besides the privacy implications, there are other important considerations when we look at how this will affect immigrant families.
We know that undocumented immigrants pay taxes. Recent Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy research finds that undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in taxes in 2022, with more than a third of that amount ($37.3 billion) going to states and localities.
Deporting immigrants on a large scale would cause most of those revenues to vanish from public coffers. Both income and sales tax revenues would be reduced as these individuals would no longer be in the U.S. earning taxable incomes and making taxable purchases.
We predict a $7.9 billion reduction in annual revenue for every 1 million undocumented people who exit the country, with $2.5 billion of that coming out of state and local budgets.
But these figures almost certainly understate the true revenue cost of deportations. They don’t account for losses to business outputs and workforce declines in sectors like construction and agriculture. They don’t consider the effects these efforts will have on documented immigrants who may be erroneously swept up in this. And they don’t try to measure how deportations may lead immigrant families to retreat from public view, constrained to less formal, off-the-books employment at jobs less likely to withhold income tax from paychecks.
Our analysis suggests that every 10-percentage point drop in the income tax compliance rate of undocumented immigrants would lower federal tax revenue by $8.6 billion per year, and state and local tax collections by $900 million per year.
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