Today ICE Can Use Medicaid Patients' Data

Hey there. Starting today, ICE is allowed to receive the personal data of Medicaid patients for deportation purposes. You might remember this unprecedented data sharing agreement from last year. It got put on hold as states sued over the practice. But over the holidays, a judge issued a new ruling allowing the sharing to resume. We've uploaded a copy of the data sharing agreement itself here because we think people should be able to read it for themselves. Check it out below.

A data sharing agreement between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which was designed for ICE to receive the personal data of nearly 80 million Medicaid patients, was published as part of a lawsuit earlier this year, with the public now able to see the exact text of that unprecedented agreement.

Earlier this year, Freedom of the Press Foundation and 404 Media sued DHS for a copy of the agreement after the agency failed to turn it over in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. A U.S. attorney working on that case then flagged to our counsel that the document had been released in a separate lawsuit various states brought against the Department of Health and Human Services and DHS.

The full text of the agreement also shows the data promised to ICE included more granular data than previously reported, such as patients’ banking “routing number, account type, account number.” 

“Access to this information will allow ICE to receive information concerning the identity and location of aliens in the United States, such as address, telephone number, banking information (routing number, account type, account number), email address, internet protocol (IP) addresses, or other information relevant to identifying and locating aliens in the United States,” the agreement reads.

The existence of the data sharing agreement was reported at the time by the Associated Press and later WIRED. 404 Media has uploaded a copy here. At the end of December, a judge ruled that the Trump administration could resume sharing much of the data after it had been blocked from doing so, Politico reported. That means ICE can use Medicaid data in deportation cases starting Tuesday, Politico added.

Under a section called “description of the data that may be disclosed,” the agreement says that data includes “Medicaid recipients: Name, address, assigned Medicaid identification number, social security number (SSN), date of birth, sex, phone number, locality, ethnicity and race.” The data allowed to be given to ICE under the new ruling is slightly narrower than that, and includes citizenship, immigration status, address, phone number, date of birth, and Medicaid ID, and is limited to people living unlawfully in the U.S., Politico reported.

In June the Associated Press reported Medicaid officials unsuccessfully fought to block the transfer of data related to millions of Medicaid enrollees from California, Illinois, Washington state, and Washington D.C. Emails showed two top advisers to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ordered the data transfer and CMS officials had 54 minutes to comply, the Associated Press added. At the time, the exact purpose of the data sharing was not known. Then the Associated Press reported on the agreement itself that said the sharing was for ICE to locate aliens in the country.

CMS did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told 404 Media in a statement, “President Trump consistently promised to protect Medicaid for eligible beneficiaries. To keep that promise after Joe Biden flooded our country with tens of millions of illegal aliens CMS and DHS are exploring an initiative to ensure that illegal aliens are not receiving Medicaid benefits that are meant for law-abiding Americans.” Undocumented immigrants do not have access to federally funded healthcare coverage, including Medicaid, according to the non-partisan, non-profit organization American Immigration Council. Federal law mandates that hospitals provide emergency care regardless of the person’s immigration status, the organization says.

The agreement is part of a much wider practice of data sharing across the second Trump administration and its mass deportation effort. The IRS has funneled data to ICE; in November a court blocked that data sharing. This month the New York Times revealed the TSA was sharing multiple lists of people a week with ICE so immigration authorities could then detain them at airports.