WASHINGTON (AP) — ICE officials will have access to the personal data of the 79 million people enrolled in Medicaid, including addresses and ethnicity, in order to locate immigrants living in the United States without legal authorization, according to an agreement that The Associated Press learned of.
The information will enable ICE officers to locate “the whereabouts of foreigners” nationwide, according to the agreement signed on Monday between the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Homeland Security. The agreement has not been publicly announced.
The unprecedented disclosure of millions of health data to deportation officials marks the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, which has repeatedly tested the legal boundaries in its effort to arrest 3,000 people per day.
Lawmakers and some CMS officials have questioned the legality of the access by immigration authorities to the Medicaid enrollees’ data in certain states. Health Department officials said the measure, first reported by AP last month, was aimed at identifying individuals enrolled in the program unlawfully.
But the agreement makes clear what ICE officials intend to do with the health data.
“ICE will use CMS data to enable ICE to receive identity and location information about the foreigners identified by ICE,” the agreement says.
The Health Department spokesman, Andrew Nixon, declined to comment on the agreement. However, it is not clear whether Homeland Security has already accessed the information. The department’s deputy secretary, 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 intended for law-abiding Americans.”
