How to resolve AdBlock issue? LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Access to the private information of millions of Californians and tens of thousands of Lake County residents who have used Medi-Cal and CalFresh has been given to the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, an action that also is affecting millions of other Americans.
On July 1, California Attorney General Rob Bonta led a multistate coalition to sue the Trump Administration over the transfer of the data.
“The Trump Administration has upended longstanding privacy protections with its decision to illegally share sensitive, personal health data with ICE. In doing so, it has created a culture of fear that will lead to fewer people seeking vital emergency medical care,” said Attorney General Bonta.
Bonta said California and 19 other states were headed to court “to prevent any further sharing of Medicaid data — and to ensure any of the data that’s already been shared is not used for immigration enforcement purposes.”
State and county officials said the data for the Medicaid program, created in 1965, has been strictly protected up until this point.
“In the seven decades since Congress enacted the Medicaid Act to provide medical assistance to vulnerable populations, federal law, policy, and practice has been clear: the personal healthcare data collected about beneficiaries of the program is confidential, to be shared only in certain narrow circumstances that benefit public health and the integrity of the Medicaid program itself,” Bonta’s office said in a July 1 statement.
As of January, 78.4 million people were enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program nationwide, Bonta’s office reported.
In a statement on the situation, Lake County Social Services explained that, to receive federal funding, California has always been required to share data gathered from the local county welfare department with the federal government.
Medi-Cal data must be shared with the federal Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services, or CMS, and CalFresh data must be shared with the federal United States Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Services, Social Services reported.
Social Services said this data has traditionally been treated with strict confidentiality, used only for program administration.
However, on June 13, CMS released Medicaid data to the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
The data CMS released to ICE included the names, Social Security numbers and home addresses of Medi-Cal recipients.
The federal government claims it gave this data to DHS “to ensure that Medicaid benefits are reserved for individuals who are lawfully entitled to receive them.” But Bonta’s office said it is Congress that extended coverage and federal funds for emergency Medicaid to all individuals residing in the United States, regardless of immigration status.
Bonta’s office said that on June 13, California and other states learned through news reports that Health and Human Services has transferred en masse their state’s Medicaid data files, containing personal health records representing millions of individuals, to DHS.
“Reports indicate that the federal government plans to create a sweeping database for ‘mass deportations’ and other large-scale immigration enforcement purposes,” the Attorney General’s Office reported.
Medicaid is known as Medi-Cal in California. California’s Medi-Cal program provides health care coverage for one out of every three Californians, including more than two million noncitizens, the Attorney General’s Office reported.
Non-citizens include green card holders, refugees, individuals who hold temporary protected status, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival recipients, and others.
Not all noncitizens are eligible for federally funded Medi-Cal services, and so California uses state-only funds to provide a version of the Medi-Cal program to all eligible state residents, regardless of their immigration status, the Attorney General’s Office reported.
The lawsuit didn’t stop the Trump administration from continuing to move forward, with a July 17 Associated Press report stating that CMS signed an agreement with Homeland Security to allow ICE continued access to all Medicaid recipient’s data, nationwide.
On the same day as the Associated Press report was published, Bonta came out with a statement, noting his alarm that the data sharing agreement came out after the lawsuit he is leading against the government.
“I’m deeply disturbed by the Trump Administration’s reckless and unprecedented weaponization of the private, sensitive data of Medicaid recipients,” said Bonta. “It is devastating to think that individuals may not seek essential medical care because they are afraid that if they do so, they may be targeted by this Administration. We sued President Trump and his lackeys after we received initial reports of this illegal data sharing earlier this month. Despite this, the Trump Administration appears to have entered into a new illegal data sharing agreement with ICE. We are moving quickly to secure a court order blocking the sharing of this data for immigration enforcement. The President’s efforts to pull personal, private, and unrelated health data to create a mass deportation machine cannot be allowed to continue.”
A hearing on the motion for a preliminary injunction filed against the Trump administration by California and the multistate coalition is scheduled for Aug. 7.
The coalition is asking that the court find the Trump Administration’s actions arbitrary and capricious and rulemaking without proper procedure in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, contrary to the Social Security Act, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, the Federal Information Security Modernization Act and Privacy Act, and in violation of the Spending Clause.
They’re also asking the court to enjoin Health and Human Services from transferring personally identifiable Medicaid data to Homeland Security or any other federal agency and Homeland Security from using this data to conduct immigration enforcement.
The impacts in Lake County
In Lake County, Medi-Cal is known as the Partnership Health Plan, said Social Services Director Rachael Dillman Parsons.
Dillman Parsons told Lake County News that as of June, 30,490 individuals were enrolled in Medi-Cal in Lake County. That’s roughly 45% of the Lake County population, which as of Jan. 1, the California Department of Finance reported that Lake County had a population of 67,254 residents.
She said that the specific information regarding how many or whose data was released by CMS to ICE was not available to her.
In Social Services’ statement on the situation, it noted, “Individuals will need to weigh their risk in continuing to receive, or applying for, needed benefits. Lake County Social Services cannot delete case records or prevent federal data sharing. We can no longer assure people that the information we gather will be used solely for program administration.”
Social Services said it encourages trusted partners to help individuals, especially immigrants, assess their personal risks and benefits of accessing human services programs in this environment.
The California Department of Social Services funds community organizations to provide certain resources for immigrants. A list can be found here.
“Experts anticipate that the chilling effect from this federal data sharing will create further strain on already limited food distribution resources and medical care, the impact of which will be felt community wide,” Social Services said.
“These are concerning times,” Dillman Parsons told Lake County News.
Other lawsuits push back on information usage
In May, the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Services, or FNS, released a notice about a new National Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, Information Database, which referenced a March executive order by President Trump called “Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos.”
The agency planned to use the data on SNAP applicants, recipients, and former recipients for a wide variety of purposes.
“FNS will use the data it receives from processors to ensure program integrity, including by verifying the eligibility of benefit recipients. This is consistent with FNS’s statutory authority and the President’s Executive Order and will ensure Americans in need receive assistance, while at the same time safeguarding taxpayer dollars from abuse,” the agency said.
SNAP is known as CalFresh in California and is sometimes referred to as “EBT” since the benefits are loaded onto an Electronic Benefit Transfer, or EBT, card to be spent at grocery stores on food.
Groups including Protect Democracy, Student Defense, the National Center for Law and Economic Justice and the Electronic Privacy Information Center on behalf of students, SNAP recipients, MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger and EPIC filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the plan.
As a result, by the start of June, the Trump administration backed off the plan, with senior U.S. Department of Agriculture official Shiela Corley giving a sworn declaration “that the agency has not collected any of the SNAP recipient data in question and will not proceed with its plan to do so without following laws intended to protect privacy and data security,” according to a Protect Democracy statement on the suit.
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