{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-merkley-demand-federal-agencies-stop-sharing-medicaid-data-with-ice", "Wyden, Merkley Demand Federal Agencies Stop Sharing Medicaid Data With ICE", "2026-08-18", "2026", "2026-08", "Democrat", "Senate", "OR", "Ron Wyden", "W000779", "www.wyden.senate.gov", "wyden", "https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases", "scraper", "Washington, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley today demanded that the federal departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Homeland Security (DHS) as well as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) immediately stop unlawfully transferring Medicaid data to DHS and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).\n\n\u201cCongress 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 HHS and CMS comply with federal court orders,,\u201d the Oregon senators wrote HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Dr. Mehmet Oz, CMS Administrator. \u201cMedicaid enrollees have a right to expect that their private information will be safeguarded and not employed for mass deportation campaigns.\u201d\n\n\u201cEach 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,\u201d the senators added. \u201cAnd HHS must suspend all Medicaid data transfers to ICE and DHS pending a comprehensive review of HHS\u2019s controls and the court\u2019s continuing oversight.\u201d\n\nIn 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\u2014including data on U.S. citizens\u2014to immigration enforcement authorities three times in violation of the court order. These data transfers form part of a larger pattern of information-sharing to advance the Trump administration\u2019s anti-immigrant agenda, at the expense of Americans\u2019 privacy and the statutory protections Congress built into these programs.\n\nThe lawmakers request answers to questions by Friday, September 4, 2026, including:\n\nHow many Medicaid records of U.S. citizens or nationals have HHS or CMS provided to ICE or DHS since January 2025?\n\nCan HHS or CMS identify every transfer of Medicaid data it has made to ICE or DHS since June 2025?\n\nWhich HHS or CMS officials are responsible for overseeing the transfer of Medicaid data to other agencies?\n\nWyden has been leading the charge in the Senate to sound the alarm on privacy violations by Trump\u2019s ICE. Earlier this year, he demanded answers from the Treasury Department about sharing taxpayer data with ICE. He also led 70 congressional Democrats, including Merkley, in calling for an investigation into ICE and DHS buying Americans\u2019 location data without a warrant.\n\nPreviously, Merkley and Wyden introduced the ICE Out of Our Faces Act to limit ICE\u2019s use of facial recognition technology.\n\nWyden led today\u2019s letter with U.S. Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). In addition to Merkley, other senators signing the letter are Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).", 1, "2026-08-19T05:29:02Z", "2026-08-19T05:30:24Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-merkley-demand-federal-agencies-stop-sharing-medicaid-data-with-ice"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.6396681312471628, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}