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privacy
Abrego Garcia Family Flees to Safe House After Trump DHS Posts Home Address on Social Media
"The Trump administration doxxed an American citizen, endangering her and her children. This is completely unacceptable and flat-out wrong."
Apr 23, 2025
The Trump administration has not only sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a Salvadoran megaprison due to an "administrative error" and so far refused to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court order to facilitate his return to the United States, but also shared on social media the home address of his family in Maryland, forcing them to relocate.
The news that Abrego Garcia's wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and her children were "moved to a safe house by supporters" after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted to X a 2021 order of protection petition that Vasquez Sura filed but soon abandoned was reported early Tuesday by The Washington Post.
"I don't feel safe when the government posts my address, the house where my family lives, for everyone to see, especially when this case has gone viral and people have all sorts of opinions," said Vasquez Sura. "So, this is definitely a bit terrifying. I'm scared for my kids."
A DHS spokesperson did not respond Monday to a request for a comment about not redacting the family's address, according to the newspaper's lengthy story about Vasquez Sura—who shares a 5-year-old nonverbal, autistic son with Abrego Garcia and has a 9-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter from a previous relationship that was abusive.
On Wednesday, The New Republicpublished a short article highlighting the safe house detail and noting that "the government has not commented on the decision to leave the family's address in the document it posted online," sparking a fresh wave of outrage over the Trump administration endangering the family.
He was "mistakenly" deported to prison camp, and it was just a "slip-up" that they then posted his wife's address. Bullshit. If these are all accidents, who's getting fired?
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— Ezra Levin (@ezralevin.bsky.social) April 23, 2025 at 12:29 PM
"The Trump administration doxxed an American citizen, endangering her and her children," MSNBC contributor Rotimi Adeoye wrote on X Wednesday. "This is completely unacceptable and flat-out wrong."
Several others responded on the social media platform Bluesky.
"These fascists didn't stop at abducting Abrego Garcia, they've now doxxed his wife, forcing her into hiding," said Dean Preston, the leader of a renters' rights organization. "The Trump administration is terrorizing this family. Speak up, show up, resist."
Jonathan Cohn, political director for the group Progressive Mass, similarly declared, "The Trump administration is terrorizing this woman."
Katherine Hawkins, senior legal analyst for the Project On Government Oversight's Constitution Project, openly wondered "if publishing Abrego Garcia and his wife's home address violates federal or (particularly) Maryland laws."
"Definitely unconscionable and further demonstration of bad faith/intimidation," Hawkins added.
While Abrego Garcia's family seeks refuge in a U.S. safe house, he remains behind bars in his native El Salvador—despite the Supreme Court order from earlier this month and an immigration judge's 2019 decision that was supposed to prevent his deportation. Multiple congressional Democrats have flown to the country in recent days to support demands for his freedom.
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When 6,000 Immigrants Can Be Declared Dead, No One’s Benefits Are Safe
It would be short-sighted to view this as an immigration issue. In fact, this move reveals both our common vulnerability to the whims of high-up decision-makers, and our shared humanity.
Apr 17, 2025
When the Social Security Administration recently reclassified more than 6,000 living and breathing immigrants as dead in order to deny them the Social Security numbers and benefits they legally held, I empathized with those migrants.
I’m not an immigrant, and I don’t receive Social Security benefits. Yet my family, like millions of other Americans, has felt the pain and helplessness of losing access to services and benefits through no fault of our own.
The technique of declaring thousands of people “dead” with one stroke of the pen is particularly cruel and epitomizes the long-standing dehumanization of immigrants in this country.
At first glance, it might seem they target someone else, somewhere else. Upon further reflection, it is evident that the actions and tactics they deploy affect everyone.
But it would be short-sighted to view this as an immigration issue. In fact, this move reveals both our common vulnerability to the whims of high-up decision-makers, and our shared humanity.
As the Trump administration inflicts one cruel injustice after another, rapid fire, on immigrants and other vulnerable groups, these updates flash across screens as discrete, targeted acts. But it is more important than ever to focus on what we have in common and reframe these headlines as coordinated actions within systems that threaten everyone’s well-being.
A few years ago, my husband wrote the annual check for his life insurance policy, sealed it in the company’s return envelope, and dropped it into the official blue U.S. Postal Service mailbox near his bank. To his surprise, the life insurance company contacted him shortly after, notifying him that his policy was canceled due to nonpayment.
Turns out, he was one of thousands of victims of mail theft and check fraud in our town and throughout the country. Just this year, the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service warned about mail theft and announced that check fraud has recently doubled.
My husband reported the crime to the police, and his bank covered the amount of the lost check. However, the life insurance company refused to reinstate his policy because during all those years he had been paying the annual fee, he also developed a chronic disease. As a small business owner with three children, my husband watched as an essential financial tool, put in place for our family, disappeared overnight—despite the fact that he had done everything right. Just like those 6,000 immigrants.
The health insurance industry has long employed the strategy of “deny, defend, and depose” to avoid covering the costs of important treatments for the sick and suffering who continue to pay climbing premiums. A 2025 article in the American Journal of Managed Care states that “insurance claim denials have risen 16% from 2018 to 2024, affecting access to essential medications like insulin and albuterol.” At the same time, health insurance companies’ net profitability increases.
Those immigrants followed strict rules and were granted Social Security numbers; they did nothing wrong. But just as their identities were wiped away, the high rate of health insurance claim denials financially wipes out millions of Americans. Almost half a million Americans declared personal bankruptcies in 2024, with medical debt the top cause.
Disability benefits are notoriously difficult to receive, and even when accessed, they are tenuous. According to the non-partisan USA Facts, “38% of applicants who meet technical requirements are accepted initially, but 53% of applicants who appeal that decision are ultimately approved.” However, the appeals process can be burdensome and last years. Paying into a private disability insurance plan holds no guarantees either.
Given that last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that “more than 1 in 4—over 70 million—adults in the United States reported having a disability,” everyone in this country knows someone who contends with their disability and simultaneously battles for benefits that are rightfully theirs. It shouldn’t be difficult, then, to empathize with immigrants’ dual plight: they must ward against diffuse and dangerous anti-immigrant sentiment and at the same time fight for basic benefits promised to them.
Even recipients of disability insurance cannot rest easy. They are often stalked and photographed by investigators who use highly selective photos to “prove” the person is able to work. Now, surveillance is digital, too. Algorithms and new surveillance technologies can be laced with bias, trespass privacy laws, and lead to unjust claim denials for the people who can least defend themselves.
These new technologies also surveil migrants, with the same built-in biases. A scholarly article published this year describes the system as “a vast digital dragnet.” Once sacred boundaries that protected the privacy of income-tax payers have now been violated to help the Department of Homeland Security locate tax-paying immigrants. Once breached, that once-clear line of privacy is now erased for anyone.
The policies and actions coming from the Trump administration can feel like a barrage—because they are. At first glance, it might seem they target someone else, somewhere else. Upon further reflection, it is evident that the actions and tactics they deploy affect everyone. No one deserves to capriciously have the rug pulled out from under them through no fault of their own—yet we’re barreling toward a future where that’s commonplace, and possibly the norm.
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'Technofascism': Whistleblower Says DOGE Goons May Have Taken Private Labor Data
"If the plundering of Americans' data wasn't concerning enough, the targeted, physical threats and surveillance... takes this to another level," said the whistleblower's attorney.
Apr 15, 2025
Despite finding a letter with "threatening language, sensitive personal information, and overhead pictures of him walking his dog" taped to his door, a technology expert at a federal labor agency has become a whistleblower, urging U.S. officials to investigate data practices by President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
NPR on Tuesday published a lengthy report about whistleblower Daniel Berulis' submission to Congress and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel sounding the alarm over DOGE employees' recent activities at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—which the president also has tried to effectively shut down, leading to court battles.
While DOGE didn't respond to NPR's request for comment, Tim Bearese, the NLRB's acting press secretary, claimed that the Musk-led entity had not requested access to the agency's system, and the NLRB had not granted it. He also said the agency investigated after Berulis raised concerns but "determined that no breach of agency systems occurred."
"As an agency protecting employee rights, the NLRB respects its employee's right to bring whistleblower claims to Congress and the Office of Special Counsel, and the agency looks forward to working with those entities to resolve the complaints," he added.
Those who spoke with NPR struck a much different tone. The reporting features interviews with Bearese, his attorney—Andrew Bakaj of Whistleblower Aid—and dozens of other experts in tech, law enforcement, the labor movement, and government. It adds to mounting worries about what DOGE is doing across various agencies under the reign of the richest man on Earth.
"I can't attest to what their end goal was or what they're doing with the data," Berulis—who found evidence of up to around 10 gigabytes of data, or the equivalent of a full stack of encyclopedias, leaving the NLRB system—told NPR. "But I can tell you that the bits of the puzzle that I can quantify are scary... This is a very bad picture we're looking at."
There's always been reason to believe DOGE was hacking govt systems. Now a whistleblower has substantiated it at NLRB, precisely the kind of data compromise labor unions worried about when they sued re DOL.
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— emptywheel ( @emptywheel.bsky.social) April 15, 2025 at 6:26 AM
"The amount of data that was taken is the equivalent to a section of the New York Public Library, and the amount of people it could impact is in the hundreds of millions," Berulis noted in a Tuesday statement from Whistleblower Aid. "Our information systems appear to have been assaulted, and someone with the capacity and mandate to investigate needs to do so."
According to NPR, labor law experts "fear that if the data gets out, it could be abused, including by private companies with cases before the agency that might get insights into damaging testimony, union leadership, legal strategies and internal data on competitors—Musk's SpaceX among them. It could also intimidate whistleblowers who might speak up about unfair labor practices, and it could sow distrust in the NLRB's independence."
Russ Handorf, who spent a decade in cybersecurity roles at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, reviewed Berulis' records and told NPR that "all of this is alarming" and "if this was a publicly traded company, I would have to report this [breach] to the Securities and Exchange Commission."
Sharon Block, a former NLRB board member and now executive director of Harvard Law School's Center for Labor and a Just Economy, said that "there is nothing that I can see about what DOGE is doing that follows any of the standard procedures for how you do an audit that has integrity and that's meaningful and will actually produce results that serve the normal auditing function, which is to look for fraud, waste, and abuse."
"The mismatch between what they're doing and the established, professional way to do what they say they're doing... that just kind of gives away the store, that they are not actually about finding more efficient ways for the government to operate," she told NPR.
It's not just DOGE affiliates, including Musk, who may have access to the data taken from federal agencies, including the NLRB. NPR reported that "if the data isn't properly protected after it leaves the agency or if DOGE left a digital door open to the agency itself, data could also be exposed to potential sale or theft by criminals or foreign adversaries."
In Whistleblower Aid's statement, Bakaj said that "what is particularly alarming is that in addition to private data being exfiltrated out of NLRB systems—and within minutes of DOGE personnel creating service/user accounts in NLRB systems—someone or something within Russia appeared to attempt to login using all of the correct credentials (e.g. usernames/passwords) on several occasions. This near real-time unlimited access by Russian actors heightens concerns to a level not previously seen and could have destroyed the agency's entire infrastructure in a matter of minutes."
"If the compromise of American's data wasn't concerning enough, the targeted, physical threats and surveillance of my client takes this to another level," he added. "It is time for Congress to act and investigate to keep our democracy from slipping away, something that could take generations to repair."
While NPR readers called the report "sickening" and shared warnings of "technofascism," there is also some optimism in this story: Berulis hopes that he not only prompts a probe but also provides a roadmap for other government employees to come forward.
"I believe with all my heart that this goes far beyond just case data," the whistleblower said. "I know there are [people] at other agencies who have seen similar behavior. I firmly believe that this is happening maybe even to a greater extent at other agencies."
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