DHS Seeks Access to Massive Employment, Salary and Family Database Legally Restricted to Use in Child Support Cases
Source: ProPublica
The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement arm is requesting unfettered access to what is considered to be the most comprehensive government database of people in the United States and their most private information, including sensitive details about individual children, according to six current and former federal officials.
It is called the Federal Parent Locator Service, and it’s meant for finding people who owe child support. Granting access to the Department of Homeland Security, the officials said, would violate a federal law that explicitly limits its use to determining and collecting child support payments and a handful of other narrow purposes. But DHS’ ask is being seriously considered within the Department of Health and Human Services, which maintains the database.
The database contains the name, address, Social Security number, employer, and salary or wages of every employed person in the country, as well as the equivalent details for anyone listed in state unemployment systems. It exists so that if someone owes child support, the government can pursue them for it even if they’ve changed jobs or moved to another state.
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Turning the child support data over to Homeland Security “would be disastrous for child support enforcement” and “would ruin the foundation of the child support program,” said Vicki Turetsky, who was commissioner of HHS’ office of child support enforcement from 2009 to 2016. Turetsky said that if this were to happen, many employers, fearful of ICE arrests of their employees or workplace raids, would consider no longer reporting new hires to the government. This in turn would degrade the ability of the system to find parents who owe payments to their kids, she said.
Read more: https://www.propublica.org/article/dhs-trump-child-support-federal-parent-locator-service-immigration
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