WIRED has confirmed that U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) employees have received instructions to share details of visitors’ in-person office appointments with agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“If ICE arrives at our office and asks whether a specific person has an upcoming appointment, we are required to give them the exact date and time,” explained one employee with direct knowledge of the new directive. The staffer spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fear of professional retaliation for speaking to the press.
While the vast majority of SSA customer appointments now take place over the phone, certain cases still require an in-person visit. This rule applies to deaf and hard-of-hearing people who need a sign language interpreter, customers who need to update their direct deposit information, and noncitizens who are required to appear in person to confirm their ongoing eligibility for benefits.
Social Security numbers are issued to U.S. citizens, but also to international students and foreign nationals legally authorized to live and work in the U.S. In some common scenarios, a citizen child or dependent needs an in-office visit, and their noncitizen primary caregiver must accompany them to the appointment.
The order to share appointment details, which was recently communicated verbally to staff at select SSA field offices, marks a new phase of expanded cooperation between the SSA and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE’s parent agency. Neither the SSA nor DHS responded to WIRED’s requests for comment on the policy.
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The SSA has been expanding data sharing with ICE for most of former President Donald Trump’s second term. In April, WIRED reported that the Trump administration was aggregating sensitive personal data from across multiple federal agencies, including the SSA, DHS, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). By November that year, WIRED confirmed the SSA had formalized these arrangements, updating a public notice to confirm the agency shared “citizenship and immigration information” with DHS.
“It was shockingly obvious how eager the Trump administration was to gain access to SSA-held immigration data,” a former SSA official told WIRED, also speaking on condition of anonymity over fears of retaliation.
This data sharing has already faced significant legal pushback: Last week, a federal district judge in Massachusetts ruled that the IRS and SSA cannot share taxpayer data with DHS or ICE.
“You’re watching the SSA turn into an extension of Homeland Security,” said Leland Dudek, former acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration.
Dudek called a directive requiring staff to share in-person appointment details “highly unusual,” noting that the SSA is intended to be a “safe space” for all visitors, regardless of immigration status. “If a person is legally owed a benefit, the SSA exists to serve them, and they should not face harm for accessing that service,” he said. Cooperating with ICE in this manner, he added, “erodes the value the SSA provides to the public. Why would anyone trust the SSA anymore after this?”
Debates over how SSA staff interact with the public date back to Trump’s first term. As part of its broader restructuring of the federal government, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency pushed to eliminate the SSA’s phone-based customer services, but reversed the decision after widespread public backlash.
The SSA already partners with law enforcement for official investigations, most often related to benefit fraud or identity theft, and has publicly disclosed formal data sharing agreements with DHS. However, individual appointment times and schedules have never been listed as a type of data covered by these existing agreements.
Historically, Dudek said, the only time an arrest has ever occurred inside an SSA office is when the individual in question had already made threats against agency staff or facilities. “Any planned apprehension of someone at an SSA office would normally go through a formal process, with notification to the office manager and coordination with DHS representatives ahead of time,” Dudek explained. “I’ve had to hand over information to law enforcement many times during my career, but there’s always been a process: paperwork, multiple layers of approval. This new directive seems to tell us to ignore all existing policy without actually updating it in writing. It’s extremely worrying.”
In December, the SSA updated its internal Program Operations Manual System to allow ad-hoc disclosures of “non-tax return information” to law enforcement that fall outside existing formal data sharing agreements. These disclosures are supposed to be approved by the SSA’s general counsel on a case-by-case basis, but Dudek said the new guidance creates dangerous ambiguity, because it draws no clear line between “a one-off request from law enforcement and a routine, regular request.”
The news of the new SSA directive comes as ICE dramatically expands its operational footprint across the United States. A recent WIRED investigation found the agency is planning to lease new office space across the country as part of a secret, monthslong expansion campaign.
