Immigration Enforcement Agency Discloses Additional Medicaid Data Sharing Errors with Palantir
ICE shared Medicaid data it wasn – Recent court documents reveal that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) distributed Medicaid information to the analytics company Palantir despite not having proper authorization to possess that information. This disclosure follows an earlier incident in January when Medicaid administrators incorrectly transmitted records concerning millions of individuals to immigration authorities. The data analytics organization Palantir maintains an application named ELITE, which enables ICE officers to view locations of foreign nationals potentially facing removal proceedings.
Legal Challenge Intensifies
This latest development emerged publicly through a legal motion submitted on Thursday by over twenty Democratic state attorneys general. These officials initiated litigation against the Trump administration during the previous year concerning the data-sharing arrangement between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and ICE.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, who received his judicial appointment from former President Barack Obama, issued a ruling in December permitting health administrators to provide ICE with specific Medicaid information regarding immigrants lacking lawful status from the states that brought the lawsuit. Such information includes residential addresses, birth dates, and immigration classifications.
However, Chhabria subsequently placed a temporary hold on data exchanges between CMS and ICE for immigration enforcement objectives during late May. This pause followed federal admissions that CMS had transmitted information to ICE in January exceeding the boundaries established by the court order. Among the problematic datasets was one containing refugee information from Minnesota that inadvertently included United States citizens. Additionally, a separate dataset transferred on January 7 encompassed millions of individuals, incorporating those residing in the country through legal channels.
Compounding Data Mishandling
According to court procedures, ICE was required to remove the improperly shared information. Judge Chhabria scheduled a hearing for August to provide further clarification regarding his order and resolve uncertainties about which categories of noncitizen records could be legally transmitted to ICE.
Nevertheless, federal authorities have acknowledged additional instances of incorrect data sharing in recent days.
A Justice Department filing submitted last week indicated that CMS once again accidentally redistributed to ICE the dataset containing millions of names that CMS had initially shared incorrectly with ICE back in January. Government representatives explained that this mistake happened while attempting to distribute information from states that were not parties to the lawsuit.
Alberto Briseno, serving as a section chief within ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division, submitted a declaration stating that ICE staff removed the file once the error came to light and confirmed it had not been utilized for law enforcement activities.
Briseno subsequently disclosed that following this deletion, the agency conducted a more comprehensive search and found that approximately six users retained copies of the January 7 dataset.
Technological Challenges and Broader Implications
In his most recent declaration, Briseno noted he had no knowledge of additional copies beyond those already identified, but emphasized that the recent searches “highlighted technological difficulties of making a representation that every possible variation of the file has been searched for and located.” He further stated, “ICE will continue to make good faith efforts to delete any copies that may be found in the future.”
Concurrently, the Department of Justice is requesting that the judge broaden his order to permit ICE to receive information on a wider range of noncitizens—potentially encompassing all immigrants who are neither legal permanent residents, citizens, nor holders of other permanent status classifications.
“ICE’s inability to identify Medicaid records in its possession undercuts any claim that the agency should be entitled to more access to that data,” the Democratic attorneys general wrote in their motion filed late Thursday.
The motion continued with additional concerns: “Each successive revelation of a violation of the Order makes it more difficult for Plaintiff States to have confidence in Defendants’ ability to maintain and secure this data in compliance with the Order, and more difficult for Plaintiff States to communicate assurances to Medicaid providers, enrollees (and their counsel), and the public at large about the privacy and confidentiality of their healthcare data.”
Palantir has not yet provided a response to inquiries regarding whether the company removed the January 7 dataset that ICE had shared after receiving it improperly from CMS. Similarly, the Department of Homeland Security has not immediately responded to requests for comment concerning its transfer of data to Palantir.
According to a declaration submitted by California deputy attorney general Anna Rich, when plaintiffs inquired about measures federal officials implemented to ensure Palantir and other contractors had eliminated the data, defendants indicated that the information had been transmitted through a Microsoft Teams chat and subsequently deleted from that chat. Rich included in her declaration a document obtained through discovery from federal officials displaying a redacted transcript of what appears to be ICE personnel requesting Palantir to remove the file.
During an April 30 hearing, Chhabria addressed several aspects of the ongoing dispute, though the proceedings continued beyond the available record.
