ICE Shared Medicaid Data It Obtained Improperly With Palantir

Immigration and Customs Enforcement transferred sensitive Medicaid information it received improperly from federal health officials to the data analytics company Palantir, according to court documents filed Thursday by more than 20 Democratic state attorneys general. The disclosure reveals a chain of data-sharing violations involving home addresses, dates of birth, and immigration status information that went far beyond what a federal judge had authorized.

How the Data Reached Palantir

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shared a dataset containing millions of names with ICE in January, exceeding the scope of a December court order. ICE then transferred this information to Palantir, which operates an application called ELITE that displays addresses of noncitizens potentially subject to deportation. The motion filed by the state attorneys general included declarations confirming that Medicaid data had reached Palantir employees or contractors.

One improperly shared dataset included U.S. citizens and was transferred on January 7. A separate dataset involving refugees in Minnesota also contained information about individuals in the country legally. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, who was appointed by former President Obama, initially permitted CMS to share certain categories of noncitizen data with ICE for immigration enforcement. In May, after learning of the January violations, the judge temporarily halted data sharing between the agencies while ordering ICE to delete the unauthorized information.

Repeated Violations and Unanswered Questions

Federal officials have now acknowledged additional instances of improper data sharing. The Justice Department revealed in recent court filings that CMS inadvertently reshared with ICE the same dataset containing millions of names that CMS had first improperly transmitted in January. Officials attributed the error to a resending effort involving data from states not part of the lawsuit. An ICE official stated in a declaration that personnel deleted the file after discovery and it was not used for law enforcement purposes.

A hearing scheduled for August is expected to clarify the court order and define precisely which categories of noncitizen data can lawfully be shared with immigration authorities. The case involves states that challenged CMS's data-sharing agreement with ICE, arguing the arrangement violated privacy protections for Medicaid beneficiaries.