A federal judge has ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to stop sharing personal information from Medicaid enrollees with immigration officials. The ruling blocks the Trump administration from using healthcare data to target migrants for deportation. District Judge Vince Chhabria granted a preliminary injunction on Tuesday that stops the Department of Homeland Security from accessing Medicaid data obtained from 20 states that filed a lawsuit against the policy.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had been providing Immigration and Customs Enforcement with personal details of millions of Medicaid enrollees since June, as reported by Fox News. This included sensitive information like Social Security numbers and home addresses of the country’s 79 million Medicaid participants. The data sharing agreements were never announced publicly, and Medicaid officials had tried to block the transfers but were overruled by top advisers to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
