A federal judge has barred the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from providing Medicaid enrollee data to immigration officials, dealing a blow to President Donald Trump’s mass deportation strategy, according to the Associated Press.
District Judge Vince Chhabria, an Obama appointee, issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday blocking HHS from sharing Medicaid enrollee data — including Social Security numbers and home addresses — with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for the purpose of locating and deporting migrants.
The order applies to the 20 states that sued to stop the Biden-era Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) from cooperating with ICE under a new data-sharing policy implemented in June.
Judge Cites “Policy Shift” Without Process
While acknowledging there is nothing “categorically unlawful” about DHS collecting data for immigration enforcement, Chhabria criticized the administration for bypassing established agency policies. For over a decade, ICE had avoided using Medicaid data for deportation purposes, and CMS had restricted use of patient information to administering healthcare programs.
Chhabria wrote that agencies needed to conduct a “reasoned decision-making process before changing them” — something the record “strongly suggests… did not occur.”
Part of Trump’s Broader Immigration Crackdown
The data-sharing agreement, signed in July, granted DHS daily access to the personal information of 79 million Medicaid enrollees. HHS did not publicly announce the policy change, which was reportedly pushed through over objections from Medicaid officials by advisers to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The move is part of the Trump administration’s wider effort to give DHS more tools to track down migrants and enforce the president’s mass deportation plan. In May, a separate federal judge allowed the IRS to share immigrant tax data with ICE.
Legal Pushback from Democrat AGs
California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the move “inhumane” and accused Trump of overstepping his authority. Washington state AG Nick Brown argued that “everyone should be able to seek medical care without fear of what the federal government may do with that information.”
Medicaid and Immigration Status
While immigrants — legal or illegal — are not eligible for standard Medicaid benefits, federal law requires states to provide emergency Medicaid to cover lifesaving ER services for anyone in the U.S., regardless of citizenship. Immigration advocates claim sharing enrollee data could discourage migrants from seeking necessary emergency care.
