The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials will be given access to the personal data of the nation’s 79 million Medicaid enrollees, including home addresses and ethnicities, to track down immigrants who may not be living legally in the United States, according to an agreement obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday, July 17. The information will give ICE officials the ability to find “the location of aliens” across the country, says the agreement signed Monday between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The agreement has not been announced publicly.
The database will reveal to ICE officials the names, addresses, birth dates, ethnic and racial information, as well as Social Security numbers for all people enrolled in Medicaid. The state and federally funded program provides health care coverage program for the poorest of people, including millions of children.
The extraordinary disclosure data to deportation officials is the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, which has repeatedly tested legal boundaries in its effort to arrest 3,000 people daily. “ICE will use the CMS data to allow ICE to receive identity and location information on aliens identified by ICE,” the agreement says.
Such disclosures, even if not acted upon, could cause widespread alarm among people seeking emergency medical help for themselves or their children. Other efforts to crack down on illegal immigration have made schools, churches, courthouses and other everyday places feel perilous to immigrants and even US citizens who fear getting caught up in a raid.
The agreement does not allow ICE officials to download the data. Instead, they will be allowed to access it for a limited period from 9 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday, until September 9.
“They are trying to turn us into immigration agents,” said a CMS official did not have permission to speak to the media and insisted on anonymity.
Immigrants who are not living in the US legally, as well as some lawfully present immigrants, are not allowed to enroll in the Medicaid program that provides nearly-free coverage for health services. Medicaid is a jointly funded program between states and the federal government. But federal law requires all states to offer emergency Medicaid, a temporary coverage that pays only for lifesaving services in emergency rooms to anyone, including non-US citizens. Emergency Medicaid is often used by immigrants, including those who are lawfully present and those who are not.
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The new agreement makes clear that DHS will use the data to identify, for deportation purposes, people who are living in the country illegally. But officials from the Health and Human Service department have repeatedly maintained that it would be used primarily as a cost-saving measure, to investigate whether non-US citizens were improperly accessing Medicaid benefits.
