Immigration and Customs Having officials gain access to the personal data of nearly 80 million people on Medicaid to obtain “information regarding the identification and location of strangers in the United States,” according to an agreement for information exchanges considered by Wired.
The agreement, entitled “Information Exchange Agreement between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Internal Security (DHS) for the announcement of identity and location information of strangers,” was signed by CMS officials on Tuesday and reported for the first time by AP News.
According to the agreement, ICE officials will include sign -up evidence for a database Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) containing sensitive medical information, including detailed records on diagnoses and procedures. Language in the Agreement says it will allow ICE to access personal information such as home addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, banking data and social security numbers. (Later in the agreement, access to ICE is allowed to access, otherwise, and only ‘Medicaid receivers’ and their gender, ethnicity and race, but to abandon any mention of IP or bank data.) The agreement will take two months. While the document was dated on July 9, it was only effective when both parties signed it, indicating a 60 -day period from July 15 to September 15.
The move is coming because President Donald Trump’s administration continued to expand his oppression of immigration. The administration aims to deport 3,000 people a day – four times as much as deported in the financial year 2024, according to ICE. The plans to do so seem to involve raising data from all over the government. Wired previously reported that the so -called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) and DHS worked on a master database, and withdrew data from across DHS and other agencies to investigate and deport immigrants.
Medicaid, state and federal government-financed healthcare coverage for the country’s poorest, is largely available to some non-citizens, including refugees and asylum seekers, survivors of human trafficking and permanent residents. Some states, such as New York, offer Medicaid coverage for children and pregnant people, regardless of their immigration status. States report their Medicaid expenditure and data to the federal government, which they compensate for some of the costs.
“It was never even considered during my five years at DHS who worked on immigration handling,” said John Sandweg, the acting director of ICE during President Barack Obama’s administration. “You want to be careful of a possible cold effect where people who may apply to benefits and qualify for benefits – or who are looking for emergency medical care – do not do so because they are concerned that the information they provide in the hospital can make them a target for immigration action.”
This is not the concern of the administration now, says Wire, spokesmen. ‘Under the guidance of Dr. [Mehmet] Oz, CMS is aggressively crackling states that can abuse federal Medicaid funds to subsidize the care for illegal immigrants, ”Andrew Nixon, the director of communications at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), tells Wired.” This supervision effort – supported by legal interagence -data dealing with DHS – is focused on identifying waste, fraud and systemic abuse. Not only do we protect taxpayers dollars – we restore the credibility of one of America’s most important programs. The American people deserve accountability. HHS delivers it. “