'Weaponization of Data': Trump Admin Gives ICE Personal Info of 79 Million Medicaid Recipients

The Trump administration is handing over the personal data of every Medicaid enrollee to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

According to The Associated Press Thursday, all 79 million people currently receiving the government health insurance benefit will have information shared with ICE by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS):

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 healthcare coverage... for the poorest of people, including millions of children.

The "extraordinary" agreement was struck Monday with CMS and not meant to be publicized, according to the AP. The memo states that its intention is to help ICE find the "location of aliens" across the country.

As one unnamed CMS employee told the AP, "They are trying to turn us into immigration agents."

Republicans have often raised the specter of undocumented immigrants claiming benefits in order to justify cutting the government health insurance program.

However, undocumented immigrants are barred from receiving federally funded Medicaid coverage.

The only exception is emergency Medicaid, which covers lifesaving services and which the government requires to be extended to anyone who needs it regardless of status—though this makes up just 1% of overall Medicaid spending.

Some states have also expanded Medicaid to include noncitizens not covered by the federal program. However, that money comes from state budgets rather than the federal one.

Last month, President Donald Trump demanded that CMS hand over the personal data of the millions of Medicaid enrollees in the seven states that allow noncitizens to apply, a move that dozens of states sued to prevent.

At the time, the government justified it as a measure to simply root out fraud and abuse. But under Monday's agreement, the AP says, the Department of Homeland Security "will use the data to identify, for deportation purposes, people who [are] in the country illegally."

However, nearly everyone enrolled in Medicaid is either an American citizen or other legal resident.

Given that the president has made very clear his intent to begin denaturalizing and deporting American citizens, the handing of tens of millions of people's sensitive information to ICE is causing widespread alarm.

"Trump is letting ICE track Americans using their personal and private Medicaid health data. Undocumented immigrants aren't eligible to receive Medicaid, but other people they want to target and track are," said Melanie D'Arrigo, the executive director of the the Campaign for New York Health. "They're not going to stop at immigrants."

"The massive transfer of the personal data of millions of Medicaid recipients should alarm every American," Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told the AP. "This massive violation of our privacy laws must be halted immediately. It will harm families across the nation and only cause more citizens to forego lifesaving access to healthcare."

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) wrote in a post on X that, "This is about the weaponization of data, full stop. Trump said he would go after the 'worst of the worst' immigrants, yet now is giving ICE EVERYONE's Medicaid data, even as ICE targets U.S. citizens."