< Roundup: Immigration rulings; DOGE & Social Security data

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TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Whoa.

ANDY: Hi. This is Andy (ph). I'm sitting next to a pond in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, listening to the sounds of spring.

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ANDY: But you're listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST, which was recorded at...

ASMA KHALID, HOST:

12:38 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, April 11 of 2025.

ANDY: Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Or maybe they haven't. Why don't you listen and find out? OK. Enjoy the show.

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KEITH: I feel a little more at peace.

KHALID: Hey there. It's the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover politics.

KEITH: And I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House.

KHALID: And after a wild, long week of politics, it is finally Friday, which means it is time for our Friday news roundup. Well, Tam, we need to start with immigration news because there has been some major developments in just the last 24 hours with the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. And just to remind folks, he is the Maryland man who the government said was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, and he has been in this legal battle to return to the United States. Last night, the Supreme Court weighed in and said the government must facilitate his, quote, "release from custody." That sounds like the Trump administration needs to bring him back to the United States. But, Tam, what are you hearing from the White House in response?

KEITH: The White House position for some time now has been that Mr. Abrego Garcia is in El Salvador now. He is a citizen of El Salvador, and he is in prison in El Salvador - through an error, but he's there now. And they can't and won't bring him back. And remember that while he initially entered the U.S. without being granted legal status, in 2019 a federal judge granted him protection from being deported because of concerns for his safety if he were to return to El Salvador. He is married to a U.S. citizen and has a son who lives in Maryland as well.

Stephen Miller, the top aide to the president and immigration hard-liner, tweeted last night that the Supreme Court rejected the lower court and made clear that a district judge cannot exercise Article 2 foreign affairs powers. And then he adds, the illegal alien terrorist is in the custody and control of a sovereign foreign nation. That is El Salvador. So his interpretation of the Supreme Court's decision is...

KHALID: Yeah, different than a lot of the other interpretations I've been seeing of that decision, to be clear.

KEITH: It is quite different. But, essentially, that is the White House position, that he's gone.

KHALID: I do want to ask you more about the El Salvador connection here. The government of El Salvador has agreed to take in and detain deportees from the United States, and the president of El Salvador is actually coming here to Washington, D.C., next week to visit and meet with President Trump. We've talked a lot about how President Trump views bilateral relationships and policy as transactional. So can he or will he, would he, you know, effect any sort of leverage on the country of El Salvador?

KEITH: Can and would are two very different questions. President Bukele in El Salvador has gladly received these prisoners into this high-level secure prison. The United States is paying millions of dollars for El Salvador to take in these deportees and put them in prison. It includes a lot of people from Venezuela, who the U.S. government claims are part of a transnational gang that they have now called a terrorist organization - the same with some people from El Salvador who were also deported and were alleged to be members of MS-13. In fact, the White House says that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13, though he denies that and has strenuously denied that in court filings.

So the president of El Salvador is coming to the United States. President Trump could say, bring him back or we won't pay you for housing all of these prisoners. But, clearly, President Trump and his White House are saying, many ways over, they don't have an interest in bringing him back. They don't want to bring him back, and they are calling him a terrorist. This is a very interesting drama that we are going to see play out, a sort of a head-to-head matchup between the Trump administration and the courts, and also just seeing President Bukele in the Oval Office with President Trump, where inevitably they will be asked about this case. That'll happen on Monday.

KHALID: This does strike me as being bigger than the single case of this Maryland man. It is a crucial test, I think, of whether the Trump administration will follow the Supreme Court's decision. I mean, it was striking to hear you talk about the ways in which Stephen Miller is interpreting the court's decision, because to be clear, as we said earlier, the Supreme Court weighed in and said that the government must facilitate his release from custody. And so my question is, you know, if the Trump administration doesn't follow that guidance, are there any consequences?

KEITH: I don't know the answer to that question, but I think that we could safely call that a constitutional crisis if the Trump administration ultimately ends up fully defying the Supreme Court and the lower courts. We aren't quite there yet, but, you know, we keep watching and many of these cases are sort of on the precipice of that.

KHALID: Stephen, I want to bring you into the conversation here. Donald Trump campaigned on immigration, and he believes he has a mandate to carry out deportations. I'm curious what you are seeing about how his actual policies are playing out.

FOWLER: Well, on the campaign trail, it was the No. 1 issue that he campaigned on. He vowed to have the largest ever deportation in American history when he took office. That hasn't played out in that exact way. There have been more targeted approaches to certain categories of people, but it is still this visual of deporting violent criminals from the country, with a focus on Tren de Aragua and MS-13 and other gangs. And, you know, people voted for Trump, you could argue, for his immigration stances.

Deportations are not just a Republican presidential thing. It would happen during President Biden and President Obama. But Trump's messaging around immigration and about deportations and removing people from the country that he says are harming the country is something that resonated during the campaign trail and has been a major theme during his first few months in the return to office - I mean, the White House social media account sharing memes about people that they've deported, people that they've sent on planes to foreign countries.

And so, you know, it is still a central part of his message even though there has also been the high-profile court cases and the examples of people being mistakenly deported, and people with no ties to gangs, according to court filings, and detailing inhumane treatment. So some would say that is kind of baked into the message and the mandate that Trump says he has.

KEITH: So what I would just add to that is in terms of polling, immigration is President Trump's number one issue. According to a new AP-NORC poll, he gets a 49% approval on his handling of immigration. That's underwater. Doesn't sound great. It is still far stronger than the way people are assessing his handling of the economy, for instance. And Republicans are off-the-charts happy with his handling of immigration.

KHALID: Despite some of these high-profile cases. That's really interesting.

KEITH: Despite some of these high-profile cases. But what I'll say is also President Trump and his homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, are in some ways shifting to a more recent emphasis on self-deportation. You know, a big part of this is they want people to be scared. They want people - they want to make it uncomfortable, and they want people to leave. And so they are talking a lot now about leaving, saying just go, self-deport. And that's how they might get to the mass deportation that they're promising.

KHALID: All right. Well, let's take a quick break. Lots more in a moment.

And we're back. And, Stephen, you, along with our colleague Jude Joffe-Block have some new reporting about the latest happenings over at the entity known as DOGE. Your reporting has to do with Social Security information and what DOGE is supposed to have access to. I want you to first actually tell us more about this DOGE staffer mentioned in your reporting. His name is Antonio Gracias.

FOWLER: Antonio Gracias is a billionaire. He's the CEO and chief investment officer of Valor Equity Partners. He's this private equity guy that's one of 10 DOGE staffers embedded in the Social Security Administration. And for the last few weeks, he has been making the rounds, making some claims about noncitizens that have received Social Security numbers. And he says that DOGE has dug into that data and other databases and other sources and some states' voter rolls that have shared the information and found evidence of noncitizens with Social Security numbers registering to vote and voting in a relatively large scale.

Now, that is not something that is true, according to both Social Security experts and election experts that we've talked to. It's very hard to match information from a state voter roll with Social Security data, even if you have the access to the back-end master Social Security data file, because of the level of precision between the two. State voter files usually have, you know, names and maybe a birth year. They don't have the level of granularity needed to match to say, oh, this person in this database here is this potential person on the voter roll. So there have been these big claims made that just have not added up with explaining how Social Security works for these noncitizens or with voting.

KHALID: I do want to ask, Stephen, also, though, about the data source itself because it sounds like he's using data that he says DOGE has collected. So to be clear now, DOGE, at least in his case, has access to all sorts of personal data information that Social Security collects?

FOWLER: Yeah. The DOGE initiative is a small number of people that have been dispersed to just about every federal agency you can think of, having access to just about every federal data set you can think of, including your personal and financial information at Social Security and other places. And this is where it gets interesting. There have been more than a dozen lawsuits challenging DOGE's access to this sensitive data, including at the Social Security Administration. And in this ongoing lawsuit there, Gracias is listed in these filings as Employee 4. Employee 4 has a bio in some of these documents that matches Gracias' bio on his website. And Employee 4, according to these court filings, doesn't have access to any sensitive Social Security data or databases.

And also, this case, a judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking DOGE staffers from accessing Social Security data while this larger case plays out. So in this lawsuit, in this case, there are some big questions about how this particular DOGE staffer has access to this particular data, or claims to have access to this data, when the courts are saying, whoa, whoa - pause - you can't do that. And so it just is part of this larger question swirling around DOGE in the federal government - who has access, why they have the access and what they're doing with it.

KEITH: Stephen, one question I have is finding alleged voter fraud doesn't even seem to be in the purpose or the remit of DOGE. What are they actually using the Social Security information for in terms of, like, finding efficiency? Is there an efficiency part of this?

FOWLER: There is an efficiency part of what DOGE is supposed to be doing in Social Security. Through these hundreds and hundreds of pages of court documents, they have explained that DOGE at Social Security is looking at doing things like cleaning up the Death Master File and filling in information for people that don't have death dates and claim to be over 100 years old, and, you know, making sure that there's nobody on the list to receive benefits that aren't supposed to because of data errors, or searching for waste fraud and abuse within Social Security benefits and data.

None of that touches on noncitizens and noncitizen voting. Though the president did sign two executive orders that are relevant here. One, he signed an executive order last month directing agencies to knock down information silos and have more data sharing. And two, there was one dealing with voting that specifically mentions having the Department of Homeland Security look at state voter rolls to find evidence of noncitizens voting there. But there's nothing really to back up why this particular person is using this set of data in this way at Social Security.

KHALID: Stephen, what's the Death Master File that you referenced?

FOWLER: The Death Master File is the file that Social Security has of people who have died and, therefore, are no longer receiving Social Security benefits and other benefits.

KHALID: You know, this strikes me of a case, yet again, in which DOGE staffers have access to a tremendous amount of government data, government information, and yet they're in this really weird position where you're sort of unclear on how they're exactly affiliated with the government entirely - right? - and what status they have. And, Tam, this comes on the heels of yet another cabinet meeting we saw this week in which Elon Musk appeared at the cabinet meeting, though he is not a member of the president's cabinet.

KEITH: You know, the first cabinet meeting, he was standing sort of where a staffer would be. This cabinet meeting, and I think this is the third or fourth - one of them, the press wasn't invited into - he was seated around the table. And he spoke. He - you know, as President Trump went around the table asking his cabinet secretaries to give a report, Elon Musk also gave a report.

One thing to note, though, that President Trump said is something to the effect of, you know, like, Elon, you've got all of these great people, all of these tech geniuses. I hope they'll stick around. And I think that that gets at the temporary nature of Elon Musk's role. In theory, he is supposed to be done after 130 days as a special government employee.

KHALID: Exactly. Yeah.

KEITH: And there have been a lot of hints dropped by the president and others that he is going to wind down his time in the government. One question I have is, are billionaires like Gracias actually going to stick around if Elon Musk goes back to just running his businesses?

KHALID: All right. Well, we are going to take one more break and when we get back. It's time for Can't Let It Go.

And we're back, and it's time for everyone's favorite part of the show, Can't Let It Go. That is the part of the podcast where we talk about the things from the week that we just cannot stop thinking about - politics or otherwise. And I think I'm going to kick it off today because mine is actually political this week.

KEITH: Whoa.

KHALID: So I have a pet peeve that apparently is kind of akin to President Trump's pet peeve, which is about water pressure in showers (laughter).

KEITH: Oh, no. Don't get me started.

KHALID: So I confess that I can relate to this situation about wanting to ensure there is good water pressure, right? Like, when I would rent apartments, I was that person who would go in and, like, the No. 1 thing I would check in each apartment is, like, turn on the shower, and what's the water pressure? - because I have really thick hair, and it's a process to wash it, which apparently is a big concern of President Trump's. And this week, he talked about it in the Oval Office.

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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: In my case, I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair.

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TRUMP: I have to stand there in the shower for 15 minutes till it gets wet. It comes out, drip, drip, drip. It's ridiculous.

KHALID: And so he put forth an executive order. There's in fact a fact sheet, for those who are curious, about making America's showers great again, in his words, which is about essentially eliminating some of what he views as bureaucratic restrictions on the amount of water that can come out of a standard shower that were put in place first by the Obama administration, then reinstated by the Biden administration.

But my question is, look, like, I've lived in different places, gone to different hotels over the last several years, and I don't feel like I noticed a substantial difference between Obama-, Trump-, Biden-era showers. I just assumed it was, like, oh, there's bad plumbing here - or lime buildup, in this situation.

KEITH: Well, there could be lime buildup, but there actually are shower heads that restrict the water coming out to conserve water. Pumping water is, like, one of the biggest sources of energy consumption in the country. I have unfortunately done many stories about this over the years.

KHALID: Really?

KEITH: And not unfortunately, one of my favorite stories ever was about President Trump's obsession with water pressure - not just showers but also toilets. He hates low-flow toilets, and hearing him talk about it is hilarious.

KHALID: All right, Stephen, what can you not let go of?

FOWLER: OK. So I don't know how much you know, Asma and Tam, about Fortnite, the video game/world-building empire that is popular with a lot of younger people, myself included. I have played from time to time. But this week, Fortnite added a special skin crossover with Sabrina Carpenter - Sabrina Carpenter, pop star. Great Tiny Desk, by the way. And so there have just been a ton of clips online of hordes of Sabrina Carpenters doing Fortnite dances and lip-synching to a lot of her songs while hilarious gameplay ensues. And if I ever get free time from all of my reporting, I might please, please, please spend some time...

KEITH: Oh, come on.

FOWLER: ...With the Sabrina Carpenter Fortnite skin because everybody else is doing it. And so that's my Can't Let It Go because I - every time I log on to Fortnite, every, you know, couple months or so, there's entirely new universes built in there, and so I have been thinking about the Sabrina Carpenter Fortnite emotes for several days this week.

KEITH: Yeah, so has my son - my older son. So I first allowed him to play Fortnite 'cause I thought it was a dancing game.

FOWLER: (Laughter).

KEITH: What I didn't know is that you dance after you kill people.

KHALID: Really?

FOWLER: And before.

KEITH: The dancing is not the point. Anyway, I have been overhearing him playing with his friends, being like, why are there all these Sabrina Carpenters everywhere? - this is terrible - while listening to Metallica or whatever.

KHALID: That's a very unusual collaboration, I will say, Fortnite and Sabrina Carpenter. That's all I got. I just - it's a - and it's an unexpected collaboration. All right. Well, what about you, Tam? What can you not let go of?

KEITH: What I cannot let go of is - it is - it's sort of a crossover event, not exactly the same, but there was a discovery in Loch Ness of a 55-year-old underwater camera that was tethered to the bottom of the lake, well below the surface, trying to capture images of the Loch Ness...

KHALID: Monster (laughter).

KEITH: ...Monster. And so these were set up before we were born, this camera system all over Loch Ness. And an oceangoing yellow sub was doing some practice in the lake. That sub is named Boaty McBoatface.

FOWLER: Ah.

KEITH: Famous. Boaty McBoatface got its rudder stuck on something related to the cameras and found this ancient camera, and they pulled it up to the surface. It was still dry. It was amazing. The system worked. It just sat there for all these years, and it was dry. And there was film, and they developed it.

KHALID: And did they see a monster?

FOWLER: A submarine?

KEITH: No. It was just sort of, like, blurry, dark pictures...

KHALID: Oh, bummer.

KEITH: ...Of underwater (laughter). But I just love that Boaty McBoatface has reemerged in our popular culture.

KHALID: All right, well, that is a wrap for today's show. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Casey Morell edits this podcast. Our producers are Bria Suggs and Kelli Wessinger. Special thanks to Roberta Rampton. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

FOWLER: I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover politics.

KEITH: And I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House.

KHALID: And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.

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