{"id":25241,"date":"2026-08-18T15:32:45","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T19:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.merkley.senate.gov\/?p=25241"},"modified":"2026-08-18T19:21:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T23:21:34","slug":"wyden-merkley-demand-federal-agencies-stop-sharing-medicaid-data-with-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merkley.senate.gov\/es\/wyden-merkley-demand-federal-agencies-stop-sharing-medicaid-data-with-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"Wyden, Merkley Demand Federal Agencies Stop Sharing Medicaid Data With ICE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Washington DC<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley today demanded that the federal departments\u00a0of Health and Human Services\u00a0(HHS)\u00a0and Homeland Security (DHS)\u00a0as well as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services\u00a0(CMS)\u00a0immediately stop unlawfully transferring Medicaid data to DHS and\u00a0the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cCongress has a responsibility to ensure that the personal health information of the tens of millions of people who rely on Medicaid is protected and that HHS and CMS comply with federal court orders,,\u201d <\/strong>the Oregon senators wrote HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Dr. Mehmet Oz, CMS Administrator. \u201cMedicaid enrollees have a right to expect that their private information will be safeguarded and not employed for mass deportation campaigns.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cEach person whose information was inappropriately disclosed is entitled to know what happened to it, and Congress is entitled to know how a federal agency came to violate the same court order three times in six months,\u201d <\/strong>the senators added. \u201cY <\/strong>HHS must suspend all Medicaid data transfers to ICE and DHS pending a comprehensive review of HHS\u2019s controls and the court\u2019s continuing oversight.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In July 2025, CMS and ICE entered into an agreement to give immigration enforcement officials access to the personal data of millions of Medicaid enrollees, including immigration status and addresses. In December 2025, a federal court set guardrails on the types of information CMS could share with ICE. HHS has now acknowledged that it transferred protected Medicaid information\u2014including data on U.S. citizens\u2014to immigration enforcement authorities three times in violation of the court order. These data transfers form part of a larger pattern of information-sharing to advance the Trump administration\u2019s anti-immigrant agenda, at the expense of Americans\u2019 privacy and the statutory protections Congress built into these programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lawmakers request answers to questions by Friday, September 4, 2026, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n