How did federal agencies get involved in Trump’s anti-immigration campaign?

President Donald Trump The administration did Immigration The focus of its political agenda. Across the government, agencies have been asked to find them New offices For immigration authorities, share Sensitive data For immigrants, payment assistance immigrants Outside government services.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) received an unprecedented amount of funding through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allocated nearly $80 billion to DHS, with 45 billion dollars For Immigration and Customs alone. ICE has doubled in size since Trump took office; The agency claims to have hired an additional person 12,000 new agents.

But efforts to target immigrants have extended beyond DHS and across the government, implicating agencies whose work previously had little or no relationship to immigration. last year, WIRED reported How the Department of Homeland Security was building a database to track and monitor immigrants, pulling data from the Social Security Administration (SSA), the Internal Revenue Service, and state-level voting data. Months later, more agencies became involved.

WIRED spoke to workers at seven agencies including the SSA, the IRS, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), who described how their work became an arm of the administration’s immigration agenda. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.

Office of Management and Budget

Countries and Non-profit organizations Their access to government grants can be cut off if the government determines that the money could be used to “finance, promote, encourage, support or facilitate” illegal immigration. The Office of Management and Budget, which sets the president’s budget and implements the administration’s policy agenda across agencies, is changing its guidance and requirements on who can receive government grants.

The Office of Management and Budget is now in the process of updating 2 CFR Part 200, or what is known as the Consolidated Directive for Federal Grants, according to sources who have seen the draft update. The new guidance will now include language saying that federal grants “shall not be used to fund, promote, encourage, support, or facilitate” several topics that have become the focus of the administration, including “racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination,” “denial of intersex recipients,” “illegal immigration,” or “initiatives that threaten public safety or promote anti-American values.”

The rule will affect federal grants via 26 federal agencies. It’s just the latest in turning immigration enforcement into a whole-of-government effort.

“There’s no way to objectively determine some of these things,” says one government employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, noting that citizen children’s support for illegal immigrants, for example, could be construed as support for “illegal immigration” in the eyes of someone like Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller. The employee says decisions will be made before the grant is awarded, making it difficult for the public or applicants to understand where these new requirements might come into effect. “I mean it’s all about how far are they willing to stretch the logic?” The employee says. “And I think they’ve proven they’re willing to stretch it quite a bit.”

The Office of Management and Budget did not respond to a request for comment.

Department of Housing and Urban Development

At HUD, the target was “mixed-status households,” households in which some members may be citizens and others may be immigrants. In January, HUD Assistant Secretary Benjamin Hobbs sent A letter To Public Housing Authorities (PHAs), which are local authorities authorized by the government to administer HUD-financed affordable housing, to inform them that they will need to re-verify the immigration status and eligibility of each resident participating in housing. “HUD strongly encourages PHAs to require families to provide proof of citizenship via birth certificates, naturalization certificates, passports, or other documents,” the letter says.

The letter adds that if the public health authority learns that a resident is “not lawfully present” in the United States, “the public health authority must submit to DHS a report on the person’s name, address, and other identifying information in the possession of the public health authority.”