Pam Bondi’s Justice Department has agreed to give a handful of Elon Musk’s DOGE “advisers” access to a system containing detailed private records on millions of immigrants dating back to the 1990s.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Courts and Appeals System, or ECAS, holds vast, comprehensive records of immigrants’ personal information, as well as every interaction they’ve had with the U.S. government.
Senior DOJ officials greenlit DOGE access to the ECAS system on Friday, The Washington Post reported.
The so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a White House office headed by President Donald Trump’s megadonor Musk, has been digging into confidential data systems across the federal government in an attempt to speed up the administration’s deportations.
DOJ staff members were instructed to prepare ECAS accounts for Marko Elez, the DOGE minion who resigned over racist social media posts before being rehired, as well as former hedge fund staffer Adam Hoffman. Payton Rehling and Jon Koval, who work at a private-equity firm tied to Musk, are also being given access, according to the Post.
Contacted by the Post, the department declined to say why the access was sought and granted. The DOGE team did not respond to the paper’s requests for comment.
But the move comes as DOGE has been forcing its way into federal databases containing private information about immigrants—often over the objections of career civil servants.
In a major policy shift, the Internal Revenue Service agreed this month to share taxpayer data with the Department of Homeland Security in an attempt to hunt down immigrants who are undocumented but nevertheless pay taxes.
IRS lawyers had warned the move was potentially illegal, but Treasury Department officials bypassed the IRS’s acting commissioner, Melanie Krause, to make the DHS deal. Krause quit in response, making her the third IRS chief to leave the agency in three months.
Last week, DOGE members embedded with Immigration and Customs Enforcement sought private Medicare data—including personal health information and addresses—to target people for deportation.
DOGE also demanded the Social Security Administration list more than 6,000 living immigrants as dead to try to force them to leave the country.
Again, senior staffers warned the plan was likely illegal, and one was physically dragged out of his office after he voiced his concerns.
Dozens of “financially dead” immigrants later showed up at Social Security offices to prove they were very much alive, forcing the agency to resurrect them.
DOGE’s move into the ECAS system “really hearkens to what we’re seeing with Social Security, with the IRS, with data that was shared with an expectation of privacy,” Lynn Damiano Pearson, a senior staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center, told the Post.
The database contains immigrants’ names, family and attorney information, addresses, court testimony, interactions with law enforcement, and motor vehicle records.
For asylum seekers, the records include confidential interviews and testimony that could put their lives at risk, an unnamed official told the Post. For undocumented aliens, the ECAS records their alien registration number.
Immigration attorneys told the Post the information is usually only accessible to immigrants and their lawyers. A small number of Homeland Security staff also sometimes gain access during proceedings such as immigration court appeals.
Accessing the system’s confidential information about court proceedings could jeopardize privacy protections both for citizens and non-citizens alike, Pearson told the Post.
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