DOGE Employees Gain Access to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Data
Information about naturalized citizens, refugees, and asylum seekers.
Four employees from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have gained access to government data regarding an unspecified number of immigrants. Recently, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency responsible for handling legal immigration, authorized Kyle Shutt, Aram Moghaddassi, Payton Rehling, and Edward Coristine, a young DOGE worker nicknamed "Big Balls," to access this data, according to an internal agency memorandum.
The memorandum, dated March 28, requests Troy Edgar, Deputy Director of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to provide guidelines on these four DOGE employees' access to what is referred to as the USCIS "data lake," which is presented as a "centralized cloud-based repository for data collected from various USCIS applications and data sources." It is noted that this system is accessed via Databricks, "an analytics platform that connects various data sources in a unified system." Additionally, the memorandum requests that DHS review and establish guidelines for DOGE employees' access to both Databricks and Github.
The memorandum does not specify why DOGE needs access to USCIS systems. However, one source indicated that the USCIS data lake includes databases, such as the Electronic Immigration System and the Central Index System, which contain information on refugees and asylum seekers. Therefore, it is possible that DOGE employees could access data on green card holders seeking U.S. citizenship, naturalized citizens, and individuals with temporary legal status such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) programs.
It remains unclear what DOGE's interest in USCIS data is. However, Elon Musk has shown particular interest in issues related to both legal and illegal immigrants. Musk has been promoting a version of the Great Replacement theory for years, claiming that Democrats have facilitated mass migration and electoral fraud to manipulate elections. In a recent episode of the All-In podcast, DOGE employee Antonio Gracias stated that there are 1.3 million undocumented immigrants in Medicaid and that "thousands" of undocumented individuals across the country are registered to vote. "The reality is that they have various types of status, and we are working on a very detailed, legal analysis of how to address this situation," Gracias commented.