Washington (AP). This week, Presidential Donald Trump’s administration has provided personal data for deportation officials, including immigration status – to find millions of Medicaid students who could facilitate people as a broad cope of his immigration.
Associated Press received internal memorandums and email Letters show that Medicaid officials have unsuccessfully sought to block data transfer by stating legal and ethical concerns.
Nevertheless, the two best health secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s junior advisers told the Data Kit to the Homeland Security Department, according to e -mail. Letters. Medicare and Medicaid service center officials were only given 54 minutes on Tuesday to follow the directive.
The data set includes information about people living in California, Illinois, Washington and Washington, DC, all of which allow non -US citizens to register for Medicaid programs that pay for their expenses using only state tax dollars. CMS transmitted information as the Trump administration increased its execution efforts in southern California.
Experts said that not only the help of the authorities to find migrants, but the government could use this information to eliminate the hope of migrants looking for green cards, permanent residency or citizenship, if they had ever received Medicaid benefits funded by the Federal Government.
The Gavin Newsom Bureau of Governor of the California Government said they were concerned about how deportation officials can use data, especially when the federal authorities are carrying out immigration raids with the help of the National Guard Army and Marines in Los Angeles.
“We greatly appreciate the privacy of all Californians,” the report said. “This potential data transmission we have drawn to the AP is particularly related to, and if real, potentially illegal, especially in the light of the many headlines that emphasize the possible use of federal personal information and federal actions to direct American personal information.”
Some California legislators also expressed anxiety on Friday. US spokeswoman Laura Friedman, Democrat, wrote on X that “we should never use the human need to seek medical attention against them. This will only lead to more chaos and pain in our communities.”
Andrew Nixon, a US health and human service spokesman, said the division is legal. He refused to answer the questions as to why the data was shared with DHS and how it would be used.
“When it comes to the recent CMS and DHS sharing data, HHS has fully complied with its legal authority and in full compliance with all applicable laws to ensure that Medicaid benefits are for persons who are lawfully entitled to accept them,” Nixon said.
DHS official, assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin, stated in a statement that the short “promised to protect Medicaid to the right beneficiaries. To keep this promise after Joe Biden flooded our country tens of millions of illegal foreigners CMS and the DHS is investigating the initiative to ensure illegal foreign.
This initiative seems to be the broader efforts of the Trump administration to provide DHS more data on migrants. For example, in May, a federal judge refused to prevent the Internal Income Service to share immigrant tax data with immigration and customs execution to help agents find and detain people without legal status in the US, USA
Targeted review of millions of immigrants Medicaid students
The CMS announced at the end of last month that it was reviewing some of the state Medicaid students to ensure that the federal funds were not used to pay for coverage for people with “unsatisfactory immigration status.” In a letter sent to state Medicaid officials, CMS said the efforts were Trump on February 19. Part of the Executive Order called “End Taxpayer Subsidization Open Borders”.
Based on June 6th. AP, June 6th. Medicaid’s deputy director of Sarah Vitol signed by a memorandum signed by her state in California, Washington and Illinois in the Medicaid program. According to the sources familiar with the process, the memorandum was written by several cms officials led by Vitol.
The data includes addresses, names, social security numbers, and claims on the data of inclusion in these states, based on a memorandum and two people familiar with what the state has sent CMS. Both persons talked about the condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to share information about data exchange.
CMS officials have tried to fight data sharing data on the homeland security request, saying that this would violate federal laws, including the 1974 Law on Social Security and Law on Privacy, according to Vitol Memorandum.
“Several federal laws and regulation institutions do not allow CMS to share this information with entities outside CMS,” wrote Vitol, further explaining that the sharing of such personal data is only allowed to administer the Medicaid program directly.
Sharing information about Medicaid applicants or students with DHS officials will violate “long-term policy,” wrote a career worker Vitol, a deputy administrator and chief operator for D. Trump, a CMS administrator.
Failed to contact Vitol and Brandt to comment.
Legal arguments set out in the memorandum were not convincing to the HHS of Trump, which oversees the Medicaid agency.
Four days after sending memories, June 10, HHS officials have instructed “Data to the DHS to Today’s 5:30 ET” transfer based on the AP e -mail. At the post off exchanges.
Former government officials said the move was unusual because CMS, which has access to personal health data for nearly half of the country, usually does not share such non -published information with other departments.
“DHS has no role with Medicaid related to Medicaid,” said Jeffrey Grant, a former CMS career worker.
In addition to his legal arguments, Vitol said that sharing information with DHS could have a harsh impact on states, possibly encouraging them to detain information. The state, she added that they had to protect themselves from the “legal risks” they had assumed to provide federal officials that could be shared with deportation officials.
“Speaking” about expansion
All states have to legally provide emergency services to non -US citizens, including those who are legally involved, but have not yet met a five -year expectation to apply for Medicaid.
Seven states, along with the area, allow immigrants who do not live legally in the country, participate in the Medicaid program of their state – with all benefits. The states began these programs during the Biden Administration and said it would not pay to the federal government to cover the health costs of those immigrants.
Trump’s administration caused doubts about that pledge.
Nixon, a spokesman for HHS, said that the state’s Medicaid program for immigrants “opened illegal immigrants floods to exploit medicaid and forced Americans to abandon the account.”
All states – California, New York, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Minnesota and Colorado – have democratic rulers. Due to his state’s budget trouble, Newsom announced earlier this year, it will freeze the admission to the program; Illinois will also close their program in July about 30,000 non -US citizens.
The rest of the state – New York, Oregon, Minnesota and Colorado – has not yet provided identified data CMS as part of the review, says public health officer who reviewed CMS requests to states.
Illinois health officials also said they were “very concerned” with the findings that revealed that their state Medicaid customers’ information was shared with federal agencies belonging to CMS, given that their “understanding), the data is stored under the 1974 Federal Privacy Act and other federal regulations.
In a statement published in the AP narrative, Newsom in California said the decision to share the data “would hurt those who would undoubtedly be referred to this abuse, security, health and safety.”
State health officials from the district and Washington did not respond to the requests to comment.