Trump Kicks Citizen Off Social Security in Anti-Immigrant Purge

Donald Trump revoked a U.S. citizen’s Social Security benefits in the hopes he would leave the country.

A man who became a naturalized citizen shortly before Trump took office received a letter on February 13 from the Social Security Administration informing him that he was losing his Social Security and Medicare benefits, The Bulwark reported Friday.

“We cannot pay you benefits because you are not lawfully present in the U.S.,” the letter obtained by The Bulwark reads. The man’s English-speaking family appealed the letter, reversing the decision, but his case is yet another reminder that the president isn’t afraid to weaponize the federal programs in his war on immigrants … or really anybody he wants out of the country.

Last week, multiple news outlets reported that the Trump administration entered the names of more than 6,000 immigrants into the SSA’s “death master file,” stripping them of their legal ability to work and receive benefits in the U.S. (Meanwhile, Elon Musk continues to claim federal safety net programs are rampant with fraudulent information, such as incorrect death dates.)

“This is an outrageous abuse of power. It will not only create extreme hardship, but kill people,” Nancy Altman, the president of the advocacy organization Social Security Works said in a statement. “Imagine, in one Trump administration keystroke, losing your income, your health insurance, access to your bank account, your credit cards, your home, and more.… When Social Security incorrectly declares someone dead, it ruins their lives.”

The Bulwark’s report comes as Trump takes his deportation threats to a new level. The Department of Homeland Security is sending letters to U.S.-born immigration attorneys telling them to leave the country immediately, and last week, Trump mused about the possibility of sending American citizens to megaprisons in El Salvador, a stark reminder the president will stop at nothing to rid the country of his adversaries.

Donald Trump is once again sourcing administration officials from the talent pool at Fox News.

The president announced Thursday night that he had formed a “revamped” Homeland Security Advisory Council, including the likes of Fox News host Mark Levin and former Fox News contributor Bo Dietl.

The council would also include South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster and Florida state Senator Joseph Gruters, who serves on the Republican National Committee and is a close ally of Trump’s.

“Under Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s leadership, HSAC will work hard on developing new Policies and Strategies that will help us secure our Border, deport Illegal Criminal Thugs, stop the flow of Fentanyl and other illegal drugs that are killing our Citizens, and MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

It’s not exactly clear how the “revamped” group will differ from past iterations of HSAC, which has been a fixture of administrations since George W. Bush announced its creation in 2002, to generate counterterrorism strategy and oversee a reorganized department.

Joe Biden’s iteration of the same group had a whopping 33 members, from the private sector and law enforcement groups—but none from TV. The DHS website, which was last updated in January, lists no current members of the group.

Trump has been known to tune into Levin’s show Life, Liberty & Levin, where the ultraconservative attacks the president’s enemies and regularly makes recommendations for his administration. Now he will make those same recommendations in an official capacity.

In November, Levin suggested to border czar Tom Homan that the Trump administration should withhold federal funding from states that failed to comply with its draconian immigration policies. Levin was once described by Rolling Stone as a “bomb-throwing Trump sycophant.”

Bo Dietl is a former detective with the New York Police Department and actor, who served as a contributor on Fox News until 2016, when he it was revealed that he’d been hired to dig up dirt on Andrea Mackris and Gretchen Carlson in an attempt to discredit their sexual harassment allegations against former Fox CEO Roger Ailes.

The State Department under Marco Rubio seems to think little of human rights and seeks to change the term’s definition.

NPR reports that the department will no longer include criticisms of poor prison conditions, government corruption, or political processes that are restrictive, in its reports on international human rights. That means government repression, such as restricting peaceful assembly or preventing free and fair elections, will no longer be documented by the agency.

The news outlet cited an editing memo and other documents showing that department employees have been ordered to “streamline” the reports to meet the minimum legal requirements. State Department reports are required by law to be a “full and complete report regarding the status of internationally recognized human rights” for every country.

The reports are usually released every year in March or April, and 2024’s reports were completed this year in January but are now being re-edited by the Trump administration, delaying them until May, sources in the department told NPR. Last month, Politico reported that references to diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as violence and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, would be removed from the reports.

Some of the changes appear to reflect the Trump administration’s foreign relationships. For example, the report on El Salvador had its section on prison conditions erased, raising questions as to whether the administration’s deal with the country to send undocumented immigrants to Salvadoran prisons, which are accused of flagrant human rights abuses, had something to do with it.

The report on Hungary, whose President Viktor Orbán enjoys high esteem from President Trump and many leading conservatives, had its section on “Corruption in Government” crossed out. Orbán has restricted press freedoms and civil liberties in the country. Experts say that the changes to the reports will undermine the State Department’s credibility.

“You can’t overstate the value in the real world of the annual State Department human rights reports being credible and impartial,” said Christopher Le Mon, who worked in the agency’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor until January.

“You also can’t overstate the damage it will do to that credibility if the Trump administration’s edits are seen to diminish—not just the scope of what are defined as human rights, but also if those edits are seen to play favorites,” Le Mon added.

The Trump administration has already been disregarding human rights here in the U.S., whether it’s the lack of due process in its mass deportation efforts, its use of El Salvador’s questionable prisons to house deported immigrants (or possibly soon U.S. citizens), its use of masked, plainclothes officers to grab people off the street, its restrictions on the press, or its attacks on academic freedom or many other actions. Maybe the administration is realizing it can’t speak credibly when it comes to basic rights and freedoms.

Donald Trump’s administration won’t stop making horrific jokes about Senator Chris Van Hollen’s meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garica, whom the government wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador last month.

Van Hollen was able to meet with Abrego Garcia Thursday, after El Salvador’s government refused to release him and the Maryland Democrat was initially denied access to the prison where he was being held.

In a post on X Friday, the White House wrote that it had “fixed” a New York Times headline about the meeting.

The original headline, “Senator Meets With Wrongly Deported Man in El Salvador” had been edited in red pen so that it read, “Senator Meets with Deported MS-13 Alien in El Salvador Who’s Never Coming Back.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wednesday that it was up to El Salvador’s government to return or keep Abrego Garcia, but she was adamant that he was “not coming back to our country.”

Bondi also said that the media should apologize to Trump for calling Abrego Garcia a “Maryland man,” even though that’s just a simple description of who he is and where he lives.

This post follows another cruel joke from the White House earlier Friday, where Trump staff compared Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garcia to a meeting between Trump and Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, a woman who was raped and killed by a Salvadoran man in 2023. The Trump administration has repeatedly trotted out Morin as a means of justifying its decision to send brown men who had nothing to do with that crime to a foreign prison.

The Trump administration has claimed that Abrego Garcia, who has no criminal record, was not only a member of MS-13, but that he was a “top leader” and “engaged in human trafficking,” while only providing thin evidence that he was even affiliated with the group.

This story has been updated.

Senator Chris Van Hollen’s meeting with wrongly deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador was stage-managed by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, right down to the table settings.

Bukele used the meeting to mount a propaganda campaign on X, posting photos from their meeting and claiming that “Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture,’” was “now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!”

In reality, those “margaritas” were glasses with cherries and salted rims, placed on the table in front of Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia by a Bukele aide in the middle of their meeting to stage a photo. The photo was quite different from the one Van Hollen shared.

Abrego Garcia’s attire of a button-down shirt with jeans and a baseball cap was also different from what he was photographed wearing when he arrived at El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, a prison known for human rights abuses. Gone were the white shirt and pants uniform of the prison’s inmates, and the cap covered Abrego Garcia’s newly shaved head, a practice that every inmate at the facility experiences.

It all seems to have been choreographed by Bukele to refute the reports of what life is really like in the prison, as well as the rumors that Abrego Garcia may have been in poor physical condition or deceased.

Clearly, El Salvador’s president is using the visit and propaganda photographs as proof that Abrego Garcia is safe in his government’s custody. But the facts are that the building trades worker was mistakenly deported and should be immediately returned to the U.S. as ordered by the Supreme Court and lower court judges. But both the White House and Bukele continue to ignore the rulings and the law.