XPost: talk.politics.misc, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.immigration XPost: talk.politics.guns, sac.politics
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials will be given access to the personal data of the nation’s 79 million Medicaid enrollees, including
home addresses and ethnicities, to track down immigrants who may not be
living legally in the United States, according to an agreement obtained by
The Associated Press.
The information will give ICE officials the ability to find “the location
of aliens” across the country, says the agreement signed Monday between
the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of
Homeland Security. The agreement has not been announced publicly.
The extraordinary disclosure of millions of such personal health data to deportation officials is the latest escalation in the Trump
administration’s immigration crackdown, which has repeatedly tested legal boundaries in its effort to arrest 3,000 people daily.
Lawmakers and some CMS officials have challenged the legality of
deportation officials’ access to some states’ Medicaid enrollee data. It’s
a move, first reported by the AP last month, that Health and Human
Services officials said was aimed at rooting out people enrolled in the
program improperly.
But the latest data-sharing agreement makes clear what ICE officials
intend to do with the health data.
“ICE will use the CMS data to allow ICE to receive identity and location information on aliens identified by ICE,” the agreement says.
Such an action could ripple widely
Such disclosures, even if not acted upon, could cause widespread alarm
among people seeking emergency medical help for themselves or their
children. Other efforts to crack down on illegal immigration have made
schools, churches, courthouses and other everyday places feel perilous to immigrants and even US citizens who fear getting caught up in a raid.
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon would not respond to the latest agreement. It
is unclear, though, whether Homeland Security has yet accessed the
information. The department’s spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said in an emailed statement that the two agencies “are exploring an initiative to ensure that illegal aliens are not receiving Medicaid benefits that are
meant for law-abiding Americans.”
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/18/politics/medicaid-ice-personal-data
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