{"id":270237,"date":"2025-07-17T20:41:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T20:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/270237\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T20:41:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T20:41:09","slug":"ice-given-access-to-medicaid-data-in-move-critics-call-a-privacy-betrayal-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/270237\/","title":{"rendered":"Ice given access to Medicaid data in move critics call a privacy betrayal | US news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Medicaid<\/a> officials have reportedly made an agreement with Immigration<\/a> and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to allow agents to examine a database of Americans\u2019 personal information \u2013 including home addresses, social security numbers and ethnicities.<\/p>\n

The data sharing agreement will allow Ice to find \u201cthe location of aliens\u201d, according to an agreement obtained by the Associated Press<\/a>. Medicaid is the nation\u2019s single largest health insurer, providing coverage for 79 million low-income, disabled and elderly people.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is about the weaponization of data, full stop,\u201d said Pramila Jayapal, a Democratic US representative from Washington state, who has worked extensively on US healthcare, in a statement on social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump said he would go after the \u2018worst of the worst\u2019 immigrants, yet now is giving ICE EVERYONE\u2019s Medicaid<\/a> data, even as ICE targets US citizens. Oh, and undocumented immigrants can\u2019t even enroll in Medicaid.\u201d<\/p>\n

The AP first reported the existence of an agreement between<\/a> the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) in June. Trump administration officials reportedly overrode the warnings of career civil servants who said such a data sharing arrangement would violate multiple statutes at the insistence of top aides to the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.<\/p>\n

\u201cMultiple federal statutory and regulatory authorities do not permit CMS to share this information with entities outside of CMS,\u201d Medicaid\u2019s deputy director, Sara Vitolo, wrote, according to a memo obtained by the AP in June.<\/p>\n

The new agreement reported by the AP said: \u201cICE will use the CMS data to allow ICE to receive identity and location information on aliens identified by ICE.\u201dTrump administration officials defended the data sharing agreement as a tool to prevent waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid.<\/p>\n

\u201cHHS and CMS take the integrity of the Medicaid program and the protection of American taxpayer dollars extremely seriously,\u201d said a health and human services (HHS) spokesperson, Emily Hilliard, in response to questions from the Guardian. \u201cWith respect to the recent data sharing between CMS and DHS, HHS acted entirely within its legal authority \u2013 and in full compliance with all applicable laws \u2013 to ensure that Medicaid benefits are reserved for individuals who are lawfully entitled to receive them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hilliard\u2019s statement went on to criticize the Biden administration for opening \u201cthe floodgates for illegal immigrants to exploit Medicaid\u201d. Hilliard said data sharing was part of an \u201coversight effort \u2013 supported by lawful interagency data sharing with DHS\u201d that \u201cis focused on identifying waste, fraud, and systemic abuse. We are not only protecting taxpayer dollars \u2013 we are restoring credibility to one of America\u2019s most vital programs.\u201d<\/p>\n

In June, the Trump administration similarly defended the data sharing agreement as part of an effort to ensure undocumented migrants who are not eligible for the program did not receive benefits.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump consistently promised to protect Medicaid for eligible beneficiaries,\u201d said DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin. \u201cTo 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president and congressional Republicans cut $1tn from Medicaid<\/a> in early July, which is estimated to result in nearly 12 million beneficiaries losing coverage over a nine-year period.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration is seeking to boost arrests in its crackdown on undocumented migrants, hoping to detain as many as 3,000 people a day. The administration arrested about 650 people a day during the first five months of the administration, according to the AP<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The administration has also enacted a strategy of arresting migrants at churches, courthouses and at a wide range of workplaces. Immigrant farm workers reportedly feel \u201chunted like animals<\/a>\u201d and immigrant construction workers face exploitation<\/a>, as immigration agents have sought to increase arrests.<\/p>\n

Undocumented migrants are generally not eligible for Medicaid and only some lawfully present migrants may obtain coverage under the program. Eligible noncitizen immigrants represent only about 6% of people currently enrolled in Medicaid, according to the healthcare research non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Income-eligible undocumented immigrants could once enroll in Medicaid in California<\/a>, but new enrollment in the program was paused by the Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom.<\/p>\n

It is unclear whether Ice agents have already accessed Medicaid information, according to the AP. However, even the existence of such an agreement could deter people from seeking needed medical care, including for children.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a privacy violation of unprecedented proportions and betrayal of trust, as the government has explicitly said, for decades, that this information will never be used for immigration enforcement,\u201d said Ben D\u2019Avanzo, a healthcare strategist at the National Immigration Law Center, on social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Medicaid officials have reportedly made an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to allow agents to examine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4316],"tags":[105,4348,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-270237","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114870516689279568","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}