ICE agents stand guard outside an immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey, in May 2026. Medicaid officials improperly shared data on millions of people with ICE, who then shared that data with data analytics firm Palantir, according to new court documents. Adam Gray/Getty Images hide title toggle title Adam Gray/Getty Images After Medicaid officials
ICE agents stand guard outside an immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey, in May 2026. Medicaid officials improperly shared data on millions of people with ICE, who then shared that data with data analytics firm Palantir, according to new court documents.
Adam Gray/Getty Images
hide title
toggle title
Adam Gray/Getty Images
After Medicaid officials improperly shared data on millions of people in January with immigration officials, ICE then shared that data with data analytics firm Palantir, according to new court documents. Palantir operates an app called ELITE that ICE agents use to display the addresses of noncitizens who may be subject to deportation.
That revelation was made public in a motion filed Thursday by more than 20 Democratic attorneys general who sued the Trump administration last year over its data-sharing agreement between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and ICE.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in California ruled in December that health officials could share with ICE certain details of Medicaid data on immigrants without legal status from the states they had sued, such as addresses, dates of birth and immigration status.
Chhabria, who was appointed by former President Obama, then temporarily suspended data sharing between CMS and ICE for immigration enforcement purposes in late May after federal officials admitted that CMS had shared data with ICE in January that went beyond what the court order allowed. One data set of refugees in Minnesota included U.S. citizens, and another that was transferred on Jan. 7 contained data on millions of people, including those legally in the country.
ICE was supposed to delete improperly shared data. Chhabria set a hearing for August to further clarify his order and clear up ambiguity over what categories of noncitizen data could legally be shared with ICE.
But in recent days, federal officials have admitted to additional cases of improper data sharing.
In a court filing last week, the Justice Department said CMS inadvertently reshared with ICE the data set containing millions of names that CMS had improperly shared with ICE for the first time in January. The government said the error occurred during an effort to share data from states not involved in the lawsuit.
Alberto Briseño, ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations section chief, wrote in a statement that ICE personnel deleted the file after it was discovered and was not used for law enforcement purposes.
Briseño then revealed that a day later, the agency had conducted a broader search and found that half a dozen users still had a copy of the January 7 data set.
In that most recent statement, Briseño said he was not aware of any additional copies of the data set, but said recent searches have “highlighted the technological difficulties in making a representation that all possible variations of the file have been searched and located.” He added: “ICE will continue to make good faith efforts to remove any copies that may be found in the future.”
Meanwhile, the Justice Department is asking the judge to expand his order to allow ICE to receive data on a broader category of noncitizens, to potentially include all immigrants who are not legal permanent residents, citizens or who do not have another form of permanent status.
“ICE’s inability to identify Medicaid records in its possession undermines any assertion that the agency should be entitled to greater access to that data,” the Democratic attorneys general wrote in their motion filed Thursday night.
Their motion continued: “Each successive disclosure of a violation of the Order makes it more difficult for Plaintiff States to have confidence in Defendants’ ability to maintain and protect this data in accordance with the Order, and more difficult for Plaintiff States to communicate assurances to Medicaid providers, enrollees (and their attorneys), and the public at large about the privacy and confidentiality of their health care data.”
Palantir did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the company had deleted the Jan. 7 data set that ICE had shared after improperly receiving it from CMS. DHS also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its data transfer to Palantir.
According to a statement filed by California Deputy Attorney General Anna Rich, when the plaintiffs asked what federal officials did to ensure that Palantir and other contractors had deleted the data, the defendants responded that the data had been shared through a Microsoft Teams chat and that the shared data was deleted from the chat. Rich shared in his statement a document provided by federal officials showing a redacted transcript of what appears to be ICE personnel asking Palantir to delete the file.
In an April 30 hearing, Chhabria had warned that the federal government could no longer use Medicaid data for deportation efforts if it continued to improperly share data on citizens and legal immigrants.
“If the federal government can’t be careful enough then they can’t use the information, okay?” Chhabria had said.
{For more tech updates, stay tuned to our blog.|Keep following us for the latest insights.|Check back often for more exciting news!}
