A coalition of 22 states told a federal court that the Trump administration appears to have violated a court order that limited the types of health data that could be shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation proceedings.
Back in December, a court allowed ICE to pull some basic information from Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program that primarily covers people with low incomes, to help the agency find people who are in the country illegally.
That ruling was a partial win for the administration in a lawsuit in which the 22 states and the District of Columbia had sued to block information sharing between ICE and Medicaid.
But the court also placed restrictions on ICE, saying it could only pull basic data such as addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and citizenship or immigration status. And the ruling barred ICE from collecting information on lawful permanent residents or citizens.
Advocates warned that even the sharing of that partial information would prompt immigrants, including those in the country legally, to forgo health coverage for fear that enrolling in Medicaid could make them or their family members easier for ICE to find.
Now, in a new filing, the states say the Trump administration appears to have ignored the court’s order limiting what information ICE is allowed to have. They claim the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicaid, has admitted to sharing with ICE “a large and complex” set of data on Medicaid recipients, even though the court said the data of citizens and lawful permanent residents is off limits.
The states claim the federal government hasn’t clarified how it determines who is “lawfully present,” nor has it confirmed whether it’s filtering out protected individuals from the data it gives to ICE.
The states are asking the court to formally bar the sharing of protected health care information for people lawfully residing in the United States. They’re also asking the court to confirm that “lawfully residing” includes noncitizens who have legal status, such as refugees and asylees. And they want the court to allow the states to examine the data that’s been shared with ICE so far, and how it has been used.
The Trump administration has not yet responded. The plaintiff states are scheduled to appear in a San Francisco federal court on April 30 for a hearing.
The states involved in the suit 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.
The court’s orders preventing Medicaid data sharing won’t apply to states not involved in the lawsuit.