ICE Gets Access To Medicaid Records So It Can Deport People For ER Visits

Saves them the trouble of asking 'Papers, please!'

We never thought those words would make sense together, an obvious failure of imagination on our part. Video screenshot, NBC LA on YouTube

Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s ethnic cleansing program gained a new tool this week with an agreement between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Homeland Security to hand over the personal data of all 79 million people enrolled in Medicaid, the AP reports. The move, which hasn’t been publicly announced by the administration because it’s none of Americans’ business what the government does, includes patients’ home addresses and ethnicity, making it easier for ICE to find “the location of aliens” who have received healthcare benefits, so they can be rounded up and deported.

When the plan was first reported last month, the administration framed it as a way of making sure no taxpayer money went towards healthcare for ineligible people, including undocumented immigrants. But the data-sharing agreement is very specific about its real purpose, stating that “ICE will use the CMS data to allow ICE to receive identity and location information on aliens identified by ICE.”

It may not be particularly legal to disclose medical records to the secret police, but “legal” ceased to be a concern for the administration months ago. ICE has Miller’s 3,000-a-day quota to meet, so let’s not get too hung up about any laws other than the ones that allow — or can be twisted to allow — mass deportations, OK?

The records available to ICE will show “names, addresses, birth dates, ethnic and racial information, as well as Social Security numbers for all people enrolled in Medicaid.” The AP notes that there is at least one itty-bitty guardrail, in that ICE officials won’t be allowed to download the data: “Instead, they will be allowed to access it for a limited period from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, until Sept. 9.”

And because Medicaid and CHIP provide healthcare coverage for nearly half the children in America, including citizen children born to undocumented folks (as long as the 14th Amendment stands), we don’t doubt their data might be used to go after undocumented parents and other family members.

Right about now you may be asking yourself the same thing I wondered when I read the story: “Wait — aren’t undocumented immigrants already ineligible for Medicaid, as with other federal public benefits, so isn’t this more for show than anything?” WELL! It turns out that is largely correct ! But regular Medicaid enrollment is not what this ICE fishing expedition is about, the AP explains:

But federal law requires all states to offer emergency Medicaid, a temporary coverage that pays only for lifesaving services in emergency rooms to anyone, including non-U.S. citizens. Emergency Medicaid is often used by immigrants, including those who are lawfully present and those who are not.

Since hospitals are required to stabilize people who arrive at an ER even if they can’t pay, emergency Medicaid is a way to help pay those hospitals to provide mandated lifesaving care. But no good deed goes unpunished.

Hannah Katch, who was an adviser at CMS when Joe Biden was president, noted that people using emergency Medicaid are often in moments of desperation, adding,

“It’s unthinkable that CMS would violate the trust of Medicaid enrollees in this way,” Katch said. She said the personally identifiable information of enrollees has not been historically shared outside of the agency unless for law enforcement purposes to investigate waste, fraud or abuse of the program.

Well hey, providing lifesaving care to people who have now been deemed enemies of the State fits the bill, kinda-sorta, doesn’t it?

The data-sharing agreement comes on the heels of a previous demand from the administration for CMS to turn over full Medicaid enrollment data, with all the identifying information, from seven states that allow noncitizens to sign up for their state Medicaid plans. The states that allow it — California, New York, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Minnesota and Colorado — pay for the coverage with state funds, and don’t use any federal money for those enrollees. But the data all goes to CMS, and DHS wanted it, because fuck HIPAA, there’s ethnic cleansing to be done.

20 states have filed suit to prevent the data from being shared, and career civil servants at CMS tried to stop it, but were overruled by political appointees. The lawsuit is still going forward even though the seven states’ data was already turned over to DHS. Yr Doktor Zoom is not a lawyer, but it seems to us that with DHS and HHS teaming up to deport people for going to the ER while brown, that lawsuit might become a class action, which may or may not still be an option for courts to rein in the Trump regime.

Also, even though the agreement is very explicit about the purpose for letting ICE paw through medical records so it can identify, track down, and deport people who are in the US without papers, the administration is sticking to its cover story that this is only about saving taxpayer money. In an emailed statement, DHS Minister of Propaganda Tricia McLaughlin insisted that her agency and HHS “are exploring an initiative to ensure that illegal aliens are not receiving Medicaid benefits that are meant for law-abiding Americans.”

And if that also leads to finding and deporting people who thought their medical records were private, by law, when they signed up for emergency Medicaid to cover an ER visit, well, those are the breaks. The social worker who may have helped them thought that the law was the law, and the HIPAA form said so too. We can only assume that Stephen Miller and the other Nazis running this scheme take some sadistic pleasure in knowing that a program designed to save lives will destroy at least some of the people who used it.

Also, would you believe that this post started out as a roundup of deportation stories, but this Medicaid stuff just got me all mean mad and stuff, so it took over? As a chaser, check out this Rolling Stone story on the grassroots resistance movement that’s taking to the streets with cameras, training on civil rights, and a belief in real American values, to do all they can to get in the way and agitate against the deportation forces. If you crash into a paywall, here’s an archive link.

---

ICE Nazi Cruelty Report: DHS Discovers Eswatini, A New African Country To Kidnap People To

Under Stupid New SCOTUS Rule, Judge Blocks Trump's Stupid Birthright Citizenship Ban

---

[AP / Guardian / Rolling Stone]

Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber, or if you’d rather make a one-time donation, this button fights both fascism and ennui.

---

Attention, SEATTLE-AREA Wonkers! Hope you didn’t forget the meetup is today! Join Yr Editrix, Shy, the kids, and Dok in SEATTLE, TODAY, Sunday, July 20, 3-6 p.m. at Lincoln Park near the North Play Area! Trix and family are coming off a weeklong trip to Shy’s family cabin (built by his dad and his grandpa with their hands in the 1960s!) in the San Juans, and Dok will be there with his fancy eee-lectric car, so help us out and come potluck!