The Trump administration is moving forward with plans to promote alarms across the California immigrant community. It hands out the personal data of millions of Medicaid recipients to federal immigrant employees who are trying to illegally track people living in the United States.
A huge pack of personal information, including residential addresses, Social Security numbers and ethnic groups of 79 million Medicaid enrollees, will allow immigrants and any customs officials to find undocumented immigrants, according to a contract signed this week between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the department obtained by the related press.
“ICE uses CMS data to enable ICE to receive identity and location information about the aliens identified in ICE,” the contract states.
The unpublished plan is the latest step by the Trump administration, gathering sensitive information about people living in the United States, cracking down on illegal immigrants and pledging to arrest 3,000 undocumented immigrants a day. It certainly faces legal challenges.
Critics have been wary since the Trump administration directed the CMS last month and directed them to send DHS personal information about Medicaid registrants, including non-US citizens registered with state funding programs in California, Illinois, Washington and Washington, DC.
These states run state-funded Medicaid programs for immigrants who otherwise would not be eligible for federal Medicaid and had promised not to charge the federal government.
California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff warned last month of potential violations of federal privacy laws as Trump officials planned to share personal health data.
“These actions not only raise ethical issues, they also violate years of HHS policies and raise great concerns about possible violations of federal law,” the senator wrote in a letter to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Christie Nom, Executive Director of DHS, and Mehmet Oz, CMS administrator.
“We are deeply troubled by the administration’s intention to use personal private health information for the unrelated purposes of enforcement actions that may be targeted at lawful non-citizens and mixed-status families,” Padilla and Schiff said in a statement. “The decision by HHS to share confidential health information with the DHS is a significant deviation from established federal privacy protections that should be wary of all Americans.”
DHS spokesman Tricia McLaughlin refused to answer questions about whether immigration officers have access to current Medicaid data or how they would use it.
“President Trump has consistently committed to protecting Medicaid for eligible beneficiaries,” McLaughlin said in a statement. “After Joe Biden floods our country with tens of millions of illegal alien CMS and DHS, we are looking for initiatives to ensure that illegal aliens do not receive Medicaid benefits targeted at law-abiding Americans in order to keep that promise.”
Undocumented immigrants are not permitted to register with Medicaid, a joint federal and state program that helps cover low-income healthcare costs. The program also limits other legally presented immigrant benefits, with some having to undergo a waiting period before receiving compensation.
However, federal law requires states to provide emergency Medicaid. This is the coverage paid to everyone, including non-US citizens, for emergency room life-saving services.
A 2024 Congressional Budget Office report found a total of $27 billion spent on non-citizen emergency Medicaid between 2017 and 2023. That number represents less than 1% of Medicaid’s overall spending over the period. Nevertheless, Trump and other federal leaders are pushing to reduce Medicaid spending, claiming that undocumented immigrants are using the program.
Hannah Kucchi, a CMS advisor to the Biden administration who previously worked for Medicaid, California, told The Times that the Trump administration’s plan to take over Medicaid data represents “an incredible violation of trust.”
The data that states send to CMS has certain protections and requirements in the statute and by custom, Katch said. She said CMS will have a devastating impact on those who rely on Emergency Medicaid to access critical care, in order to share information about non-agency Medicaid enrollees.
“It’s extremely cruel to make children fear seeking care when they are experiencing a medical emergency or when they are experiencing a medical emergency,” Kutch said.
Elizabeth Laird, the impartial director of civil technology at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said that sharing of such data would further erode people’s trust in the government.
“By handing over some of our most sensitive medical data to ice, health and human services, we fundamentally betrayed the trust of almost 80 million people,” she said in a statement in the Times.
“This incredible development proves that the administration’s claim to use this information to prevent fraud is a Trojan horse, and instead a Trojan horse that advances its goal of deporting millions of people,” she said. “Over 90% of qualification fraud is committed by US citizens, underscoring the false pretense of sharing this information with ICE.”
It is not the first time the Trump administration has attempted to share personal information between departments. In May, the Department of Agriculture told the state that data on recipients of Snap Food Merits should be taken over.
Last month, California Medical Asun. The Trump administration warned that sharing personal Medicaid data will put nearly 15 million patients and their families at risk statewide.
CMA presidential election Dr. René Bravo said sending sensitive patient information to deportation authorities “will have a devastating impact on the community and provide access to the care that everyone needs.”
“Our job is not to protect borders, we are protecting patients and providing the best possible health care,” Bravo said in a statement. “When patients come to us, it is often the most vulnerable time of their lives and we provide a safe space for their care.”
The Orange County Department of Immigration and Refugee Affairs informed the public last month that CMS had been instructed to send DHS personal information for Medicaid registrants, including non-citizens.
“This data provided for the purpose of managing healthcare could be used to find individuals for immigration enforcement and to challenge future immigration applications,” the statement read.
The agency wrote that they had already heard an increase in anxiety among clients who fear that their personal information could be used against them if they were seeking medical services.
“We are concerned that this will further erode trust in public agencies and care providers,” the agency writes.
Orange County Supervisor Vicente Salmiento represents a large Latino population, including parts of Santa Ana and Anaheim, and said that medically registered families did so with reasonable hope that their information would be kept private.
He called the action a “cruel violation” that undermined people’s trust in the government.
“These actions mean that they may block participation in healthcare and that some individuals may not seek the health services they need,” he said in a statement. “This hurts the entire community, generates serious public health concerns and increases the costs of the healthcare system.”
Jose Serrano, director of the Orange County Immigration and Refugee Department, said certain information about those who register for benefits has been shared with the state for a long time and has passed it on to the federal government for research, funding and eligibility.
“One of the things that are different during this period is that information is being used against people, especially those who are immigrants,” he said.
The situation has already sparked anxiety among immigrant groups in Orange County, Serrano said. Some reached out to an agency asking if they could unsubscribe from the program or if their family members or their families could change their addresses in fear that they would be targeted by immigration officers.
“The truth is that immigration spends more on our communities and our economy and then they take it away,” Serrano said.
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