Federal agents on patrol in Minneapolis in January. A coalition of 22 states says the Trump administration has likely violated a court order limiting the types of health information that can be shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation proceedings. (Photo: Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
A coalition of 22 states told a federal court that the Trump administration appears to have violated a court order limiting the types of health data that can be shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation proceedings.
Court in December allowed ICE to pull basic information from Medicaida state’s federal health insurance program that primarily covers low-income people to facilitate the agency find people who are in the country illegally.
This ruling was a partial victory for the administration in a lawsuit in which 22 states and the District of Columbia sued to block information sharing between ICE and Medicaid.
But the court also placed restrictions on ICE, saying it can only collect basic data such as addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and citizenship or immigration status. The ruling prohibited ICE from collecting information on lawful indefinite residents and citizens.
Advocates warned that even releasing this partial information would prompt immigrants, including those in the country legally, to forgo health insurance out of fear that enrolling in Medicaid would make it easier for ICE to find them or their family members.
Now, in a modern filing, states say the Trump administration appears to have ignored a court order limiting what information ICE can have. They claim that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicaid, admitted to releasing a “large and complex” set of data on Medicaid beneficiaries to ICE, even though a court found that data on citizens and lawful indefinite residents was unavailable.
The states say the federal government has not explained how it determines who is “lawfully present” or confirmed whether it filters out protected individuals from the data it gives to ICE.
States are asking the court to formally prohibit the release of protected health care information to people legally present in the United States. They are also asking the court to confirm that “lawful residence” includes non-citizens with legal status, such as refugees and asylum seekers. They also want the court to allow states to examine the data shared with ICE so far and how it is used.
The Trump administration has yet to respond. State plaintiffs are scheduled to appear in federal court in San Francisco on April 30 for trial.
The states involved in the lawsuit are those with Democratic attorneys general: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin.
Court orders preventing the release of data to Medicaid will not apply to states not included in the lawsuit.
Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at: avollers@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by state linewhich is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network that includes Pennsylvania Capital-Star, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
