Senator Markey, Ranking Member Wyden, Colleagues Demand HHS, DHS Stop Sharing Medicaid Data with ICE

Letter to HHS, CMS (PDF) | Letter to DHS (PDF)

Washington (August 18, 2026) - Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Subcommittee on Primary Health and Retirement Security, and Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, along with Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), wrote to Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Dr. Mehmet Oz, and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, demanding that HHS and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immediately stop unlawfully transferring Medicaid data to DHS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and that DHS immediately stop unlawfully receiving Medicaid data transfers from HHS.

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-including data on U.S. citizens-to immigration enforcement authorities three times in violation the court order. These data transfers form part of a larger pattern of information-sharing to advance the Trump administration's anti-immigrant agenda, at the expense of Americans' privacy and the statutory protections Congress built into these programs.

In the letters, the lawmakers wrote, "Congress 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 the Trump administration complies with federal court orders. Medicaid enrollees have a right to expect that their private information will be safeguarded and not employed for mass deportation campaigns. Each 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."

In the letter to HHS and CMS, the lawmakers concluded, "HHS must suspend all Medicaid data transfers to ICE and DHS pending a comprehensive review of HHS's controls and the court's continuing oversight."

In the letter to DHS, the lawmakers concluded, "DHS must stop receiving all Medicaid data transfers from HHS and CMS pending a comprehensive review of the agencies' data controls and the court's continuing oversight."

The lawmakers requested answers to questions by Friday, September 4, 2026, including:

1. How many Medicaid records of U.S. citizens or nationals have HHS or CMS provided to ICE or DHS since January 2025?
2. Can HHS or CMS identify every transfer of Medicaid data it has made to ICE or DHS since June 2025?
3. Which HHS or CMS officials are responsible for overseeing the transfer of Medicaid data to other agencies?
4. Is it the position of DHS and ICE that a refugee lawfully admitted to the United States is "not lawfully residing" here, and that their Medicaid data may therefore be transferred to ICE? Who at DHS or ICE approved that interpretation, and when did they approve it?

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