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Conor here: Here we see the effects of ICE gaining access t nearly 80 million Medicaid patients, including<\/a> patients\u2019 banking \u201crouting number, account type, account number.\u201d\u00a0That\u2019s in addition to DHS contracts with Palantir<\/a> and facial recognition company Clearview AI<\/a>, its side-door access to Flock\u2019s license plate scanning technology<\/a>, social media monitoring through a company called Penlink<\/a>, its phone hacking contract through Israel-based Paragon<\/a>, its face-scanning mobile app<\/a>, as well as its use of various government biometric databases in immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n It\u2019s almost like this isn\u2019t about immigration, which could have been handled by just cracking down on employers of undocumented.<\/p>\n By Phil Galewitz<\/a> and Amanda Seitz<\/a>. Galewitz is a senior correspondent at KFF Health News. Seitz is a reporter covering health care policy in Washington for KFF Health News. Originally published at KFF Health News<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s move to give deportation officials access to Medicaid data<\/a> is putting hospitals and states in a bind as they weigh whether to alert immigrant patients that their personal information, including home addresses, could be used in efforts to remove them from the country.<\/p>\n Warning patients could deter them from signing up for a program called Emergency Medicaid, through which the government reimburses hospitals<\/a> for the cost of emergency treatment for immigrants who are ineligible for standard Medicaid coverage.<\/p>\n But if hospitals don\u2019t disclose that the patients\u2019 information is shared with federal law enforcement, they might not know that their medical coverage puts them at risk of being located by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n \u201cIf hospitals tell people that their Emergency Medicaid information will be shared with ICE, it is foreseeable that many immigrants would simply stop getting emergency medical treatment,\u201d said Leonardo Cuello<\/a>, a research professor at Georgetown University\u2019s Center for Children and Families. \u201cHalf of the Emergency Medicaid cases are for the delivery of U.S. citizen babies. Do we want these mothers avoiding the hospital when they go into labor?\u201d<\/p>\n For more than a decade, hospitals and states have assured patients that their personal information, including their home addresses and immigration status, would not be shared with immigration enforcement officials when they apply for federal health care coverage. A 2013 ICE policy memo<\/a> guaranteed the agency would not use information from health coverage applications for enforcement activities.<\/p>\n But that changed last year, after President Donald Trump returned to the White House and ordered one of the most aggressive immigration crackdowns in recent history. His administration began funneling data from a variety of government agencies to the Department of Homeland Security, including tax information<\/a> filed with the IRS.<\/p>\n The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, agreed last spring to give ICE officials direct access to a Medicaid database that includes enrollees\u2019 addresses and citizenship status.<\/p>\n Twenty-two states, all but one led by Democratic governors, sued to block<\/a> the Medicaid data-sharing agreement, which the administration did not formally announce until a federal judge ordered it to do so last summer. The judge ruled in December<\/a> that in those states, ICE could access information in the Medicaid database only about people in the country unlawfully. KFF Health News contacted more than a dozen hospitals and hospital associations in states and cities that have been targets of ICE sweeps. Many declined to comment on whether they\u2019ve updated their disclosure policies after the ruling.<\/p>\n