A federal judge in California, turning away a challenge by New York and other blue states, has ruled the Trump administration may resume sharing biographical, location, and contact data about unauthorized immigrants receiving public health insurance benefits with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, starting in January.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria was a victory for the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration and a setback for California, New York and 18 Democrat-led states. The states sued in July to block the administration from using Medicaid data acquired from the Department of Health and Human Services to further its mass deportation initiative.
The ruling could affect hundreds of thousands of immigrants without permanent legal status living in New York state, according to data provided to Gothamist by Bill Hammond, senior health policy fellow at the Empire Center, an Albany-based nonpartisan think tank. About 7 million New Yorkers are enrolled in Medicaid, according to state officials.
Stephen Miller, President DonaldTrump’s deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser, said in a post on X, “This ruling is long overdue.” Department of Homeland spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement the ruling was “a victory for the rule of law and American taxpayers.”
But critics of the information-sharing with ICE contend it trammels privacy rights and will further deter immigrants from signing up for government programs and seeking health care, including for issues such as infectious diseases for which treatment or lack thereof could have consequences for the broader population.
“This is a deterrent for non-citizens to get involved in any kind of government program, including Medicaid,” Hammond said. “That may be what the Trump administration intends, they want to send the message: stay away, we don’t want you here.”
Undocumented immigrants cannot enroll in federal Medicaid programs, but several Democrat-led states have extended state-funded health insurance benefits to some immigrants who lack legal status. New York has extended Medicaid benefits to all residents over 65 years old, regardless of their immigration status, including 19,500 “undocumented immigrants” as of March 2024, according to data provided by Hammond.
States also provide Medicaid insurance to low-income individuals, regardless of their immigration status, for emergency services. As of March 2024, there were 480,000 immigrants enrolled in emergency Medicaid in New York state, according to Hammond’s data. That number includes noncitizens whose citizenship status renders them ineligible for other Medicaid programs, Hammond said.
Chhabria’s order, handed down on Monday, allows the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to share with ICE the citizenship and immigration status, address, phone number, date of birth, and Medicaid ID of immigrants living unlawfully in the United States.
ICE and HHS, however, are barred from sharing personal health records and other potentially sensitive medical information because, Chhabria said in his ruling, “the new policies are totally unclear about what that information would be, why it would be needed for immigration enforcement purposes, and what the risks of sharing it with DHS (Department of Homeland Security) would be.”
Chabbria also barred HHS from sharing information about other immigrants receiving Medicaid.
The ruling does not officially define who qualifies as an “unlawfully present” immigrant whose data may be shared, and it makes no mention of the specific circumstances of asylum-seekers, recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or other forms of deportation parole.
The decision comes after California, New York, and 18 other states sued the Trump administration, following reports that HHS was sharing data about undocumented immigrants enrolled in Medicaid with DHS officials.
Chhabria in August temporarily barred the Trump administration from sharing Medicaid data for immigration enforcement purposes, but his new ruling partially overrides that decision. It comes after HHS and ICE released memos in the fall about why and how they planned to share data.
ICE policy previously barred the agency from using Medicaid data as the basis of immigration enforcement actions until October, when ICE issued its new policy on the matter under the Trump administration.
In the memorandum, the agency said it can use HHS information for its law enforcement purposes, including criminal immigration investigations and civil immigration enforcement.
The memo said the information may help identify immigrants who entered the U.S. without inspection and who have failed to register themselves with the appropriate federal authorities.
“The information obtained from HHS will assist ICE in holding these aliens accountable for violating the nation’s immigration laws,” the memo said.
ICE began requesting Medicaid data in June, according to the memo. The Associated Press reported that month that HHS gave DHS personal data on immigrants from states including California, Illinois, Washington state, and Washington, D.C.
HHS requested extensive data from the New York state Department of Health to, as the federal agency put it, ensure that federal funds were being appropriately used for immigrants without legal status, according to the testimony of Amir Bassiri, deputy commissioner of the Office of Health Insurance Programs at the New York state Department of Health.
Federal funds for unauthorized immigrants may only go toward emergency Medicaid costs.
Bassiri said he was concerned about “misuse” of confidential Medicaid data by the federal government. The state Department of Health did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
