FROM FOX NEWS: A federal judge ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to stop providing access to Medicaid enrollees’ personal data, including their home addresses, to immigration officials.
District Judge Vince Chhabria, an Obama appointee, granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Department of Homeland Security from using Medicaid data obtained from 20 states that filed a lawsuit to stop the data sharing.
The order, handed down Tuesday, blocks HHS from sharing data on Medicaid enrollees in these states with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the purpose of targeting migrants for deportation.
“Using CMS data for immigration enforcement threatens to significantly disrupt the operation of Medicaid—a program that Congress has deemed critical for the provision of health coverage to the nation’s most vulnerable residents,” Chhabria wrote.
Chhabria went on to admit that there is nothing “categorically unlawful” about DHS obtaining data from other agencies to use in immigration enforcement, but ICE issued a policy 12 years ago preventing Medicaid data to be used for that reason.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also has a policy to only use a patients personal information for its healthcare programs.
“Given these policies, and given that the various players in the Medicaid system have relied on them, it was incumbent upon the agencies to carry out a reasoned decision-making process before changing them,” Chhabria wrote, adding: “The record in this case strongly suggests that no such process occurred.”
District Judge Vince Chhabria, an Obama appointee, granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Department of Homeland Security from using Medicaid data obtained from 20 states that filed a lawsuit to stop the data sharing.
🤬— Brody62 (@Christi57379096) August 15, 2025
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