Role: Chief of DOGE-coordinated immigration data task force, 2025; concurrently CEO and founder of Valor Equity Partners, a private equity firm with substantial Tesla and Musk-company exposure.

Status: As of June 2026, Gracias continues at Valor Equity. Multiple FOIA requests seek records of his federal access and decision-making.

Basis for Inclusion

Subject classification: Voluntary Public Figure.

Anchor met: Anchor B — operational coordinator of a DOGE-affiliated task force exercising federal authority over immigration data systems. Anchor D — voluntarily assumed a senior federal-data-access role while continuing as Valor Equity CEO.

Background

Antonio Gracias is an American billionaire businessman who founded Valor Equity Partners and has served on the board of directors of Tesla and SpaceX. Valor has held substantial Tesla and SpaceX investment exposure and manages retirement plans for public employees, including reported relationships with CalPERS and other public pension funds.

DOGE Role

• March 2025 SSA placement: Gracias took on a formal role at the Social Security Administration focused on DOGE cost-cutting in the Social Security program; he was one of approximately 10 DOGE staffers embedded at SSA (NPR; CBS News, 2025).
• DHS immigration data taskforce: Led the DOGE taskforce that accessed immigration data at the Department of Homeland Security and appeared alongside Musk in public claims about immigrants and benefits.
• Voter-fraud claims (April 2025): In an April 2, 2025 Fox & Friends appearance, Gracias claimed “5-plus million” noncitizens received Social Security numbers “through an automatic system” and that his team identified thousands of them on voter rolls who had voted. State-level audits of voter data have found very few examples of noncitizens voting. NPR reported (April 11, 2025) that DOGE may have improperly used Social Security data to push voter-fraud narratives.
• EBE program mischaracterization: Per NPR, Gracias made misleading claims about SSA’s Enumeration Beyond Entry (EBE) program — which streamlines SSN assignment for certain categories of eligible noncitizen workers — framing it as a fraud vector rather than a documented administrative procedure.

Documented Actions

• Directed task force activity accessing SSA data and immigration databases.
• Continued Valor Equity CEO role during DOGE service.

Real-World Impacts

Federal Employees

• Coordinated workforce activity at affected agencies (ICE, USCIS, SSA).

American Citizens (Public Services)

• SSA data-matching activity during this period coincided with documented delays in benefit determinations (Federal News Network, 2025).

Vulnerable Populations

• Immigrant communities: Task force activity directly targeted immigrant populations through data aggregation across enforcement and benefits systems — raising civil-liberties concerns documented by ACLU, Brennan Center, and EFF (2025).
• SSA beneficiaries: Data-matching exercises affecting Social Security records raised concerns about benefit interruptions for citizens flagged by automated matching (multiple congressional letters, 2025).

Privacy and Data Security

• DOGE access to SSA databases — granted during Gracias’s tenure leading the immigration task force — is subject of multiple pending federal lawsuits (Alliance for Retired Americans v. Bessent and related matters).
• Public pension funds invested in Valor Equity raised governance concerns about a private-equity CEO simultaneously directing federal data access (multiple pension-fund board correspondence, 2025).

Other Documented Harms

• Federal court filings document concerns about the security of SSA data accessed by Gracias-directed personnel.

Conflicts of Interest

• Valor Equity CEO: Active during DOGE service. Valor’s Tesla and SpaceX exposure creates direct conflict with DOGE’s coordination with Musk businesses.
• Pension fund governance: Public pension fund investors in Valor raised concerns about CEO’s simultaneous federal data-access role.

Sources

• Wikipedia, “Antonio Gracias”
• NPR, “How DOGE may have improperly used Social Security data to push voter fraud narratives,” April 11, 2025
• NPR, “The Trump administration admits even more ways DOGE accessed sensitive personal data,” January 23, 2026
• CBS News, “Elon Musk, DOGE use access to Social Security data to elevate claims against migrants,” 2025
• Rolling Stone, “Elon Musk and DOGE’s Antonio Gracias Cash In on Americans’ Retirement,” 2025
• The American Prospect, “AFL-CIO Report: Is DOGE’s Antonio Gracias Mishandling Retiree Investments?,” July 14, 2025
• AFT correspondence to CalPERS, July 21, 2025
• WIRED, NYT, ProPublica DOGE immigration coverage, 2025
• ACLU, Brennan Center, EFF civil-liberties analyses, 2025
• Multiple federal lawsuits regarding SSA data access