The Trump administration has given Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) access to personal data from 79 million Medicaid enrollees, including their addresses and ethnicities, as part of the US government’s intensified immigration crackdown, The Associated Press reported on Thursday, citing a memo.
What the Agreement Says
The agreement, signed Monday between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), empowers ICE to locate undocumented immigrants living across the US.
According to the report, the agreement states that federal agency would “use the CMS data to allow ICE to receive identity and location information on aliens identified by ICE.”
The latest US government’s move on immigration crackdown, which is yet to be publicly announced, potentially raises serious concerns about privacy and legality, with some officials having reportedly questioned whether deportation officials should have access to Medicaid enrollee data at all.
Inside Trump Team’s Crackdown on Undocumented Immigrants
The Trump administration, the report said, has in recent months pushed aggressively to detain around 3,000 undocumented immigrants almost on a daily basis. Officials say the data-sharing is meant to prevent people who are in the country illegally from receiving Medicaid benefits meant for “law-abiding Americans,” as reported by the AP.
The agencies “are exploring an initiative to ensure that illegal aliens are not receiving Medicaid benefits that are meant for law-abiding Americans,” the US-based news agency quoted DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin as saying.
It remains unclear whether ICE has already accessed the data.
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