Rennie Glasgow, who has served 15 years at the Social Security Administration, is seeing something new on the job: dead people.
They鈥檙e not really dead, of course. In four instances over the past few weeks, he told 麻豆女优 Health News, his Schenectady, New York, office has seen people come in for whom 鈥渢here is no information on the record, just that they are dead.鈥 So employees have to 鈥渞esurrect鈥 them 鈥 affirm that they鈥檙e living, so they can receive their benefits.
Revivals were 鈥渟poradic鈥 before, and there鈥檚 been an uptick in such cases across upstate New York, said Glasgow. He is also an official with the American Federation of Government Employees, the union that just before the start of President Donald Trump鈥檚 second term.
Martin O鈥橫alley, who led the Social Security Administration toward the end of the Joe Biden administration, said in an interview that he had heard similar stories during a recent town hall in Racine, Wisconsin. 鈥淚n that room of 200 people, two people raised their hands and said they each had a friend who was wrongly marked as deceased when they鈥檙e very much alive,鈥 he said.
It鈥檚 more than just an inconvenience, because other institutions rely on Social Security numbers to do business, Glasgow said. Being declared dead 鈥渋mpacts their bank account. This impacts their insurance. This impacts their ability to work. This impacts their ability to get anything done in society.鈥
鈥淭hey are terminating people鈥檚 financial lives,鈥 O鈥橫alley said.
Though it鈥檚 just one of the things advocates and lawyers worry about, these erroneous deaths come after a pair of initiatives from new leadership at the SSA to alter or update its databases of the living and the dead.
Holders of millions of Social Security numbers have been marked as deceased. Separately, according to The Washington Post and The New York Times, thousands of numbers belonging to immigrants have been purged, cutting them off from banks and commerce, in an effort to encourage these people to 鈥渟elf-deport.鈥
Glasgow said SSA employees received an agency email in April about the purge, instructing them how to resurrect beneficiaries wrongly marked dead. 鈥淲hy don鈥檛 you just do due diligence to make sure what you鈥檙e doing in the first place is correct?鈥 he said.
The incorrectly marked deaths are just a piece of the Trump administration鈥檚 crash program purporting to root out fraud, modernize technology, and secure the program鈥檚 future.
But 麻豆女优 Health News鈥 interviews with more than a dozen beneficiaries, advocates, lawyers, current and former employees, and lawmakers suggest the overhaul is making the agency worse at its primary job: sending checks to seniors, orphans, widows, and those with disabilities.
Philadelphian Lisa Seda, who has cancer, has been struggling for weeks to sort out her 24-year-old niece鈥檚 difficulties with Social Security鈥檚 disability insurance program. There are two problems: first, trying to change her niece鈥檚 address; second, trying to figure out why the program is deducting roughly $400 a month for Medicare premiums, when her disability lawyer 鈥 whose firm has a policy against speaking on the record 鈥 believes they could be zero.
Since March, sometimes Social Security has direct-deposited payments to her niece鈥檚 bank account and other times mailed checks to her old address. Attempting to sort that out has been a morass of long phone calls on hold and in-person trips seeking an appointment.
Before 2025, getting the agency to process changes was usually straightforward, her lawyer said. Not anymore.
The need is dire. If the agency halts the niece鈥檚 disability payments, 鈥渢hen she will be homeless,鈥 Seda recalled telling an agency employee. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know if I鈥檓 going to survive this cancer or not, but there is nobody else to help her.鈥
Some of the problems are technological. According to whistleblower information provided to Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, the agency鈥檚 efforts to process certain data have been failing more frequently. When that happens, 鈥渋t can delay or even stop payments to Social Security recipients,鈥 the committee recently .
While tech experts and former Social Security officials warn about the potential for a complete system crash, day-to-day decay can be an insidious and serious problem, said Kathleen Romig, formerly of the Social Security Administration and its advisory board and currently the director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Beneficiaries could struggle to get appointments or the money they鈥檙e owed, she said.
For its more than 70 million beneficiaries nationwide, Social Security is crucial. More than a third of recipients said they wouldn鈥檛 be able to afford necessities if the checks stopped coming, according to National Academy of Social Insurance published in January.
Advocates and lawyers say lately Social Security is failing to deliver, to a degree that鈥檚 nearly unprecedented in their experience.
Carolyn Villers, executive director of the Massachusetts Senior Action Council, said two of her members鈥 March payments were several days late. 鈥淔or one member that meant not being able to pay rent on time,鈥 she said. 鈥淭he delayed payment is not something I鈥檝e heard in the last 20 years.鈥
When 麻豆女优 Health News presented the agency with questions, Social Security officials passed them off to the White House. White House spokesperson Elizabeth Huston referred to Trump鈥檚 鈥渞esounding mandate鈥 to make government more efficient.
鈥淗e has promised to protect social security, and every recipient will continue to receive their benefits,鈥 Huston said in an email. She did not provide specific, on-the-record responses to questions.
Complaints about missed payments are mushrooming. The Arizona attorney general鈥檚 office had received approximately 40 complaints related to delayed or disrupted payments by early April, spokesperson Richie Taylor told 麻豆女优 Health News.
A Connecticut agency assisting people on Medicare said complaints related to Social Security 鈥 which often helps administer payments and enroll patients in the government insurance program primarily for those over age 65 鈥 had nearly doubled in March compared with last year.
Lawyers representing beneficiaries say that, while the historically underfunded agency has always had its share of errors and inefficiencies, it鈥檚 getting worse as experienced employees have been let go.
鈥淲e鈥檙e seeing more mistakes being made,鈥 said James Ratchford, a lawyer in West Virginia with 17 years鈥 experience representing Social Security beneficiaries. 鈥淲e鈥檙e seeing more things get dropped.鈥
What gets dropped, sometimes, are records of basic transactions. Kim Beavers of Independence, Missouri, tried to complete a periodic ritual in February: filling out a disability update form saying she remains unable to work. But her scheduled payments in March and April didn鈥檛 show.
She got an in-person appointment to untangle the problem 鈥 only to be told there was no record of her submission, despite her showing printouts of the relevant documents to the agency representative. Beavers has a new appointment scheduled for May, she said.
Social Security employees frequently cite missing records to explain their inability to solve problems when they meet with lawyers and beneficiaries. A disability lawyer whose firm鈥檚 policy does not allow them to be named had a particularly puzzling case: One client, a longtime Social Security disability recipient, had her benefits reassessed. After winning on appeal, the lawyer went back to the agency to have the payments restored 鈥 the recipient had been going without since February. But there was nothing there.
鈥淭o be told they鈥檝e never been paid benefits before is just chaos, right? Unconditional chaos,鈥 the lawyer said.
Researchers and lawyers say they have a suspicion about what鈥檚 behind the problems at Social Security: the Elon Musk-led effort to revamp the agency.
Some 7,000 SSA employees have reportedly been let go; O鈥橫alley has estimated that 3,000 more would leave the agency. 鈥淎s the workloads go up, the demoralization becomes deeper, and people burn out and leave,鈥 he predicted in an held by House Democrats. 鈥淚t鈥檚 going to mean that if you go to a field office, you鈥檙e going to see a heck of a lot more empty, closed windows.鈥
The departures have hit the agency鈥檚 regional payment centers hard. These centers help process and adjudicate some cases. It鈥檚 the type of behind-the-scenes work in which 鈥渢he problems surface first,鈥 Romig said. But if the staff doesn鈥檛 have enough time, 鈥渢hose things languish.鈥
Languishing can mean, in some cases, getting dropped by important programs like Medicare. Social Security often automatically deducts premiums, or otherwise administers payments, for the health program.
Lately, Melanie Lambert, a senior advocate at the Center for Medicare Advocacy, has seen an increasing number of cases in which the agency determines beneficiaries owe money to Medicare. The cash is sent to the payment centers, she said. And the checks 鈥渏ust sit there.鈥
Beneficiaries lose Medicare, and 鈥渢hose terminations also tend to happen sooner than they should, based on Social Security鈥檚 own rules,鈥 putting people into a bureaucratic maze, Lambert said.
Employees鈥 technology is more often on the fritz. 鈥淭here鈥檚 issues every single day with our system. Every day, at a certain time, our system would go down automatically,鈥 said Glasgow, of Social Security鈥檚 Schenectady office. Those problems began in mid-March, he said.
The new problems leave Glasgow suspecting the worst. 鈥淚t鈥檚 more work for less bodies, which will eventually hype up the inefficiency of our job and make us, make the agency, look as though it鈥檚 underperforming, and then a closer step to the privatization of the agency,鈥 he said.
Jodie Fleischer of Cox Media Group contributed to this report.