UPDATE: Congressman demands Social Security reverse "potentially illegal" new policy

On March 20, Popular Information revealed that the Social Security Administration (SSA) secretly implemented a policy shift that could impose massive demands on the agency's already overburdened network of field offices.

Each year, the SSA automatically issues millions of Social Security numbers and cards to non-citizens granted work authorizations as part of an agreement between the SSA and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

The agreement, known as Enumeration Beyond Entry (EBE), benefits both the work-authorized non-citizens, who receive their cards in the mail as part of the application process, and the government, which does not need to spend time and money processing separate applications for millions of Social Security numbers. In the 2024 fiscal year, there were over 3.24 million initial Employment Authorization Documents approved by USCIS.

EBE was created in 2017 by the Trump administration. In the absence of the EBE program, everyone granted work authorization will be required to visit a Social Security field office to obtain a new Social Security number and card.

Popular Information obtained a March 19 memorandum that the EBE program for "noncitizens granted work authorization" and "newly naturalized U.S. citizens" has been "temporarily" frozen. According to SSA sources, the freeze is still in effect.

Now, the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Congressman Gerald E. Connolly (D-VA), has written a letter to the SSA demanding that it reverse the policy. Connolly’s letter, which was sent to Acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek on Tuesday, says freezing the EBE program "increases costs and decreases efficiency and potentially violates multiple federal laws."

Connolly's letter cites an internal SSA memo, dated March 24, that outlines several issues with the EBE freeze. The issues detailed in the March 24 memo, which Popular Information also obtained, include:

Legal violations. The memo warns that the EBE freeze "poses legal risk," including non-compliance with the Social Security Act, which requires the SSA to "take affirmative measures to assure that social security account numbers will, to the maximum extent practicable, be assigned to aliens at the time of lawful admission to the United States." The memo also said that the freeze could violate the Administrative Procedure Act, which prohibits arbitrary actions with no "reasonable factual basis."

Damage to SSA operations. The SSA memo says pausing the EBE program "will cause customer confusion, additional field office traffic, and potentially increase the risk of issuing multiple [Social Security numbers] to the same person." An SSA source told Popular Information that the freeze will require 60,000 to 75,000 additional people per week to visit a field office.

Increased costs. It costs $8.00 to issue a Social Security card through the EBE program and $55.80 at a field office.

"Your role in destroying the SSA under the guise of cost savings and fraud prevention is nothing more than another loosely coordinated attack on immigrants led by the Trump Administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)," Connolly concludes. "I can discern no legitimate reason for stopping the EBE program—it will only serve to make the Social Security system less efficient, less secure, and more expensive."

Connolly has also launched an investigation into the decision to freeze the EBE program, requesting all documents and communications related to the freeze by April 30, 2025.

Read the full letter from Connolly:

Connelly Letter To Social Security 41625

243KB ∙ PDF file

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