Two top operatives with Elon Musk’s cost-cutting initiative have been transferred from the Social Security Administration to the Justice Department’s immigration enforcement unit as part of a widening White House effort to use personal data to target undocumented immigrants, according to officials briefed on the move.
The operatives, Jon Koval and Payton Rehling, have been working on an embedded team from the Department of Government Efficiency that has tried to gain access to highly sensitive Social Security data with the purported goal of reducing government waste. So far, that effort has fallen short of its cost-cutting predictions.
Mr. Koval, a 2020 business school graduate, and Mr. Rehling, a computer and machine learning specialist, will be responsible for scouring Social Security databases for information on thousands of undocumented immigrants already subject to deportation proceedings, according to a senior administration official with knowledge of their assignments.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
The department has been given a vastly expanded role in immigration enforcement under President Trump. He has ordered federal prosecutors to prioritize criminal violations related to immigration, investigate local governments that obstruct enforcement and expel migrants by revoking their Social Security cards after falsely listing thousands of them as dead in databases.
An internal memo outlining Mr. Koval’s temporary, 120-day transfer to the Justice Department was drafted on Tuesday, the same day that Mr. Trump issued an executive memo blocking migrants from obtaining Social Security benefits and directing the department to redeploy prosecutors in 50 U.S. attorneys’ offices to bring criminal cases and initiate deportations.
The memo, obtained by The New York Times, described broad, and unspecified, authority in “reducing the immigration case backlog,” and said Mr. Koval would continue to work on projects “related” to Social Security.
The memo cited Mr. Koval’s “specialized skills,” including software engineering, system design, project management, information security and executive leadership.
Mr. Koval, a graduate of Ohio State’s business school, previously worked for Antonio Gracias, a wealthy investor who served as a board member of Tesla and SpaceX, companies run by Mr. Musk.
Mr. Gracias has a history of making misleading claims about the program that streamlines the procedure for granting Social Security cards to immigrants, as well as exaggerating the number of undocumented immigrants allowed to vote in U.S. elections.
“I think this was a move to import voters,” he said, repeating a conspiracy theory that Republican lawmakers have raised in pressing for stricter voting policies.
On a podcast appearance this month, Mr. Gracias referred to Mr. Koval as a “finance ninja.”
He also credited Mr. Rehling with finding the Social Security data that prompted the misleading claims he and Mr. Musk have made about immigrants. “We dug into it, and that’s how all this started,” Mr. Gracias said.
Mr. Rehling, like Mr. Koval, was employed at the firm Mr. Gracias founded, Valor Equity Partners, before joining his boss on Mr. Musk’s team.
He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Alabama and another advanced degree in computer science from Georgia Tech, according to a company biography.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has repeatedly called Mr. Musk a friend and sought maximum federal sentences for those convicted of vandalizing Tesla dealerships, has welcomed his team to the department.
So far, Mr. Musk’s operation has mainly focused its efforts on increasing efficiency at the immigration enforcement unit, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
On Thursday, a top House Democrat called on the inspector general at the Social Security Administration to investigate the activities of Mr. Musk’s group there, citing a whistle-blower’s claims that the team’s actions were putting secure information at risk of misuse and foreign hacking.
The whistle-blower information “paints a picture of chaos at S.S.A. as DOGE is rapidly, haphazardly and unlawfully working to implement changes that could disrupt Social Security payments and expose Americans’ sensitive data,” wrote Representative Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.
Nicholas Nehamas contributed reporting.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
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