ICE shared Medicaid data it shouldn’t have with Palantir : NPR

Key Points:

• In January, Medicaid officials improperly shared data on millions of people, including citizens and legal residents, with ICE, which then shared this data with Palantir, a data analytics firm whose app ELITE is used by ICE agents to locate noncitizens for deportation.
• A federal judge temporarily paused data sharing between CMS and ICE after discovering the data shared exceeded court-approved limits, including sensitive information such as home addresses and immigration status.
• Despite orders to delete the improperly shared data, ICE admitted to retaining copies of the dataset, citing technological challenges in ensuring all versions were deleted, and the Justice Department revealed CMS inadvertently reshared the data during a later attempt to share information.
• Democratic attorneys general criticized the federal government's handling of the data, arguing that repeated violations undermine trust in the government's ability to protect Medicaid recipients' privacy and oppose expanding ICE's access to broader categories of noncitizen data.
• The court warned that continued improper data sharing could lead to a halt in the use of Medicaid data for immigration enforcement, emphasizing the government's responsibility to handle sensitive healthcare information with care.