ICE Is Getting Unprecedented Access to Medicaid Data
Immigration and customs officials have access to personal data of nearly 80 million people on Medicaid in order to acquire “information concerning the identification and location of foreigners in the United States”, according to an information exchange agreement referred to by Wired.
The agreement, which is entitled “Information exchange contract between the centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the disclosure of identity and the location information of extraterrestrials”, was signed by CMS officials on Tuesday and reported for the first time by AP News.
According to the agreement, ICE officials will obtain connection identification information for a centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) database containing sensitive medical information, including detailed files on diagnostics and procedures. The language of the agreement indicates that it will allow ice to access personal information such as personal addresses, telephone numbers, IP addresses, banking data and social security numbers. (Later in the agreement, what ice is authorized to access is defined differently, specifying only the “beneficiaries of Medicaid” and their sex, their ethnic origin and their race but renouncing any mention of intellectual or banking property data.) The agreement should last two months. Although the document is dated July 9, it is only in force when the two parties sign it, which would indicate a period of 60 days from July 15 to September 15.
This decision comes as President Donald Trump’s administration continued to expand his repression against immigration. The administration aims to expel 3,000 people a day – four times more than those expelled during the year 2024, according to ICE. His plans to do so apparently the whole government’s data vacuum cleaner. Wired previously pointed out that the so-called Ministry of Government Effectiveness (DOGE) and the DHS worked on a main database, drawing data from DHS and other agencies, in order to monitor and deport immigrants.
Medicaid, the coverage of health care funded by the State and the federal government for the poorest in the country, is widely available only for certain non-citizens, including refugees and asylum seekers, survivors in the trafficking in human beings and permanent residents. Some states, such as New York, offer Medicaid coverage to children and pregnant persons, regardless of their immigration status. The States report their expenses and data from Medicaid to the federal government, which reimburses them for certain costs.
“This has never even been taken into account during my five years at DHS working on the application of immigration,” said John Sandweg, ICE interim director during the administration of President Barack Obama. “You want to pay attention to a possible scary effect where people who could request services and be eligible for services – or to ask for emergency medical care – will not do so because they fear that the information they provide in the hospital can make it a goal of immigration action.”
This is not the concern of the administration now, the spokesperson Tell Wired. “Under the direction of Dr. [Mehmet] Oz, CMS aggressively represses states that can abuse federal Medicadaid funds to subsidize care for illegal immigrants, “said Andrew Nixon, communications director of the Ministry of Health and Social Services (HHS). We do not protect taxpayers’ dollars – we restore credibility to one of the most vital programs in America. responsibility.
