How the Trump Administration Turned Every Federal Agency Into an Immigration Enforcement Tool
The Donald Trump administration has centered immigration as the core of its entire policy agenda, requiring federal agencies across every branch of government to support the push: from sourcing new office space for immigration enforcement bodies, to sharing confidential immigrant data, to pushing immigrants off all taxpayer-funded government services.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secured an unprecedented level of funding for this work via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allocated nearly $80 billion total to DHS — with $45 billion earmarked exclusively for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Since Trump took office, ICE has more than doubled in size, with the agency reporting it has added 12,000 new agents to its roster.
But the campaign to target immigrants has expanded far beyond DHS, drawing in agencies that previously had little to no connection to immigration enforcement into the administration’s push. Last year, WIRED first revealed that DHS was building a national immigrant tracking and surveillance database that pulls personal data from the Social Security Administration (SSA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and state voter registration rolls. Months later, even more federal agencies have been folded into the effort.
WIRED spoke to current employees across seven participating agencies — including SSA, IRS, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) — all of whom described how their day-to-day work has been reworked to serve as an extension of the administration’s immigration agenda. DHS did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this report.
Office of Management and Budget
Under new proposed rules, states and nonprofits could lose all access to federal grants if the administration determines their funding could be used to “fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate” illegal immigration. The OMB, which drafts the president’s annual budget and rolls out administration policy across all federal agencies, is currently revising its grant eligibility guidance and requirements for all recipients.
According to sources who have reviewed the draft update, OMB is modifying 2 CFR Part 200 — the federal government’s uniform guidance for all federal grants — to add new language banning federal grant money from being used for a list of priorities targeted by the administration. The banned activities include “racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination,” “denial of the recipient of the sex binary in humans,” “illegal immigration,” and “initiatives that compromise public safety or promote anti-American values.”
The new rule would impact every federal grant program across 26 separate federal agencies, marking one of the broadest expansions of whole-of-government immigration enforcement to date.
One anonymous federal employee, who requested anonymity out of fear of professional retaliation, noted that “there’s no way to determine some of these things objectively.” For example, the worker explained, even programming that supports the U.S.-born citizen children of undocumented immigrants could be interpreted as supporting “illegal immigration” by hardline administration officials like Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller.
All eligibility determinations are made before a grant is awarded, the employee added, leaving the public and applicants with little transparency into how these new rules are being applied. “I mean, it's all about how far are they willing to stretch logic?” the employee said. “And I think they've proven that they're willing to stretch it pretty damn far.”
The OMB did not respond to a request for comment.
Department of Housing and Urban Development
At HUD, the administration’s target is “mixed status households” — families where some members are U.S. citizens and others are immigrants. In January, HUD Assistant Secretary Benjamin Hobbs issued a letter to all Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) — local bodies authorized to manage HUD-funded affordable housing — requiring PHAs to re-verify the immigration status and eligibility of every housing program resident. “HUD strongly encourages PHAs to require that families provide proof of citizenship by such means as birth certificates, naturalization certificates, passports, or other documentation,” the letter states.
The letter also mandates that if a PHA confirms a resident is “not lawfully present” in the U.S., “then the PHA must provide to DHS a report of the person’s name, address, and other identifying information that the PHA has.”
While PHAs have long been required to confirm eligibility for taxpayer-supported housing, the new policy requires PHAs to use a new reporting tool within HUD’s Enterprise Income Verification (EIV) system that cross-references HUD resident data with the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system run by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The tool generates a list of people whose citizenship or eligible immigration status HUD requires to be re-confirmed.
Weeks later, on February 19, HUD proposed a formal new rule that would bar mixed-status families from accessing most government housing benefits. The press release announcing the rule claims a joint HUD-DHS audit of all assisted housing households found 200,000 tenants with “incomplete or unknown eligibility verification,” and 24,000 people the agency labels “illegal aliens, ineligibles, and fraudsters” living in mixed-status households.
Historically, mixed-status families received prorated housing support based on the number of eligible members in the household. The new rule would make that prorated support only temporary, “pending verification of eligible status of all family members.” It also requires every person living in government-subsidized housing to provide proof of citizenship or lawful immigration status to keep their housing.
HUD did not respond to a request for comment.
Social Security Administration
SSA has been aligning its operations with the administration’s immigration agenda for months, ranging from sharing sensitive immigrant personal data with DHS to making it far harder for legal immigrants to obtain Social Security numbers.
In March 2025, SSA paused the Enumeration Beyond Entry program, which previously automatically issued Social Security numbers to immigrants lawfully authorized to live and work in the U.S. Now, all new immigrants must appear in person at a local SSA office to verify their identity to receive a number.
Meanwhile, officials with the controversial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — which was stationed at SSA in spring 2025 — moved thousands of immigrants’ records into the agency’s “death master file,” effectively deactivating their Social Security numbers and cutting off their access to both government benefits and legal employment in the U.S.
In April 2025, WIRED revealed that SSA data was being shared with DHS via the SAVE system, which is used to verify immigration status. States are now using this integrated data to clean voter rolls, leading to thousands of naturalized U.S. citizens being wrongfully removed from voter registration lists. The SAVE system is the same tool HUD uses to screen housing benefit eligibility.
On December 19, 2025, USCIS (which falls under DHS) issued a memo ending expedited naturalization processing for applicants who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI). SSI provides monthly cash benefits to low-income elderly people, people with disabilities, and people with minimal financial resources. Human trafficking victims and refugees — particularly those from Iraq, Ukraine, and Afghanistan — are also eligible for these benefits, which typically expire after seven years. Previously, if a naturalization application had been pending for six months or more and an applicant’s SSI benefits were set to expire, they would be moved to the front of the processing queue.
“But this would enable them to allow refugee status to expire so they lose benefits,” one anonymous SSA employee said, who also requested anonymity over fear of retaliation.
In February 2026, SSA office employees across multiple regions were instructed to share all visitor appointment details with ICE.
SSA did not respond to a request for comment.
Department of Labor
After DOGE gained access to sensitive DOL data, the administration has turned its focus to investigating businesses that employ immigrant workers. Last year, WIRED reported that DOGE gained access to DOL’s database of migrant farm workers and organizations that support them. In July, DOL announced that all grantees funded through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and other workforce programs must verify that every person they serve is legally authorized to work in the U.S.
In September, DOL launched Project Firewall, an initiative focused on investigating companies that sponsor H1-B work visas. More recently, employees were told that agency enforcement priorities now include penalizing businesses that violate immigration law to pay workers below the minimum wage. The enforcement effort frames its goal as addressing harm to U.S.-born workers, arguing that hiring undocumented workers allows employers to suppress wages and reduce workplace protections for all employees.
Health and Human Services
Like SSA, HHS has also shared sensitive patient data with immigration authorities, and its work has become deeply tied to the administration’s large immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota and its unproven claims of widespread immigrant fraud.
In November, HHS announced that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) would begin sharing all Medicare and Medicaid beneficiary data with DHS and ICE. Certain immigrants — primarily green card holders who have held residency for five years or more — are eligible for these public health programs, and the new data sharing has created widespread fear among eligible immigrant patients.
A KFF Health News investigation found that many doctors are conflicted over whether to inform patients of the new data sharing agreement, because warning patients could deter them from signing up for emergency Medicaid or seeking needed medical care altogether.
In December, after conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley made unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud in Minnesota childcare centers run by members of the state’s Somali immigrant community, former HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill announced a full freeze on childcare payment funding for the state. The fraud allegations triggered a massive ICE immigration surge in Minneapolis that deployed roughly 3,000 ICE agents to the city. During the surge, federal agents killed two U.S. citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
Vice President JD Vance, who now leads the administration’s anti-fraud efforts, and CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz announced in late February that the administration would halt all Medicaid payments to the state over the fraud allegations. In January, Oz made similar fraud claims targeting California’s Armenian American community. In response, California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office filed a federal civil rights complaint against the agency. Oz has also warned that CMS could withhold “hundreds of millions of dollars in payments” if California does not comply with CMS’s demands for information about alleged fraud, particularly in the state’s hospice facilities.
HHS did not respond to a request for comment.
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Immigration rules have also restricted access to nutrition services at the USDA. After the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in summer 2025, multiple groups of immigrants lost access to food assistance via the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). While undocumented immigrants have never been eligible for SNAP, the new rule also bars refugees, special immigrant visa holders from Afghanistan and Iraq, and many human trafficking survivors from accessing the program.
In response to a request for comment, a USDA spokesperson told WIRED: “Due to the complex nature of non-citizen policy, USDA is in the process of developing additional guidance based on questions from SNAP State Agencies and partners.”
General Services Administration
WIRED previously reported that the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages all federal government buildings, is helping ICE expand its office and operations facilities across the country, including new locations near sensitive community spaces like schools, houses of worship, and health care clinics. The expansion effort launched in September 2025, when GSA employees were added to a dedicated ICE “surge team” tasked with sourcing new office space for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (ICE’s legal division), and Homeland Security Investigations.
Internal Revenue Service
Like SSA, the IRS holds massive amounts of sensitive personal data on both U.S. citizens and immigrants — including data from millions of undocumented immigrants who pay federal taxes. In April, the Treasury Department (which oversees the IRS) announced a new memorandum of understanding with DHS that allows sharing confidential taxpayer information with DHS for immigration enforcement purposes. WIRED also confirmed that IRS data was added to DHS’s expanded SAVE system around the same time.
A federal judge initially blocked the IRS from moving forward with the data sharing agreement, but on February 24, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against issuing a preliminary injunction, effectively allowing the data sharing to continue. Just two days later, on February 26, a separate federal judge ruled that the IRS had violated federal tax law “42,695 times” in its data sharing with DHS.
The IRS did not respond to a request for comment.
Small Business Administration
The Small Business Administration (SBA), which normally has no involvement in immigration operations, has also been forced to shut down one of the only pathways for non-citizen small business owners to access federal capital. On February 2, the SBA announced a policy revision that effectively bars businesses with non-citizen owners from accessing SBA loans via its two primary lending programs — even if the owner is a legal immigrant lawfully residing in the U.S. Previously, businesses with up to 5% foreign ownership were eligible for SBA loans.
“We have never received any evidence, credible or otherwise, from the SBA or any other entity, that large numbers of individuals in the U.S. without legal authorization are receiving access to SBA financing and loan products,” a group of Democratic lawmakers wrote in a letter to SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler. “The SBA is doing nothing except making it harder for American-owned small businesses to access capital.”
On March 2, an SBA employee logging into the agency’s internal loan system found a new agency-wide banner informing staff that SBA financing is limited to “applicants with 100% direct and/or indirect owners and SBA-required guarantors, all of whom must be U.S. Citizens or U.S. Nationals” residing in the U.S. or its territories.
“The Trump SBA has been very consistent: we are committed to driving economic growth and job creation for American citizens—which is why the agency implemented citizenship verification across its loan programs and why it will no longer guarantee loans for small businesses owned by foreign nationals,” SBA spokesperson Maggie Clemmons told WIRED. Clemmons noted that loans to noncitizens made up only 4% of approved SBA loans in 2025, adding: “Because SBA has a finite lending capacity, the agency’s rule change will help ensure more American citizens have access to funding previously granted to noncitizens.”
The Broader Strategy Behind the Whole-of-Government Push
Much of the administration’s focus has fallen on agencies that administer public services for low-income people and families. Mark Greenberg, former general counsel at HHS and a scholar in residence at the Brookings Institution, says this alignment ties back to the administration’s expanded version of the longstanding “public charge” rule in U.S. immigration law.
“It’s a concept in immigration law that someone should not get a visa or be admitted to the country, or become a lawful permanent resident, if they are likely to be dependent on cash assistance or on the government for institutionalization,” Greenberg explained. In November, DHS released a notice of proposed rulemaking that would expand the definition of a “public charge” even further than previous iterations.
As part of the proposed rule, DHS openly states that it expects increased scrutiny of public benefit access to create a “chilling effect” that will save the government “$8.97 billion annually due to disenrollment or forgone enrollment in public benefits programs by members of households that include aliens who may be receiving public benefits.”
But even agencies whose core work has no connection to social services have not escaped the administration’s immigration push, as this report details.
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