Washington Attorney General Nick Brown and 19 other states filed a lawsuit last month to challenge the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ decision to hand over Medicaid data on millions of enrollees to federal deportation officials.
Advisers to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ordered the release of a dataset containing private health information of people living in California, Illinois, Washington state, and Washington, D.C., to the Department of Homeland Security, as The Associated Press first reported last month. These states allow non-U.S. citizens to enroll in Medicaid programs that cover their expenses using only state taxpayer dollars.
Officials released this unusual sharing of private health information—including addresses, names, social security numbers, immigration status, and claims data for enrollees in those states—to deportation officials as they ramped up enforcement efforts nationwide. Experts said the Department of Homeland Security could use this data to help locate migrants in its mass deportation campaign.
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