ICE was ordered to delete Medicaid data on millions of people shared in January. It reportedly sent that data to Palantir instead

Federal immigration officials sent Medicaid data on millions of people to the data analytics firm Palantir, according to new court filings. The data had allegedly been shared improperly with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the first place, and officials had been ordered to delete it.

The claim was made public in a motion filed Thursday by more than 20 Democratic state attorneys general. The attorneys general sued the Trump administration last year over a data-sharing agreement between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and ICE, court filings show.

According to NPR, Palantir operates an app called ELITE that ICE agents use to view the addresses of noncitizens who may be subject to deportation, the filings state. Palantir told NPR in a statement that the dataset in question had been purged.

Judge had limited what immigration data could be shared

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ruled in December that health officials could share certain Medicaid data about immigrants without lawful status with ICE, including home addresses, dates of birth, and immigration status, and only for states involved in the lawsuit.

Chhabria, who was appointed by former President Obama, temporarily paused data sharing between CMS and ICE for immigration enforcement purposes in late May. That pause came after federal officials admitted CMS had shared data in January that went beyond what the court order allowed. 

One dataset of refugees in Minnesota included U.S. citizens, and another dataset transferred on Jan. 7 contained data on millions of people, including people in the country legally, per the court filings.

ICE was ordered to delete the improperly shared data. Chhabria has scheduled a hearing for August to further clarify his order and address ambiguity over which categories of noncitizens’ data can lawfully be shared with ICE.

In recent days, federal officials have admitted to additional instances of improper data sharing. In a court filing last week, the Justice Department said CMS again inadvertently reshared the same dataset of millions of names with ICE. The government said the error occurred during an effort to share data from states not involved in the lawsuit.

Alberto Briseno, a section chief for ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations, wrote in a declaration that ICE personnel deleted the file after it was discovered, and he stated it was not used for law enforcement purposes. 

Briseno also said that, a day later, a broader search by the agency found that six users still had a copy of the Jan. 7 dataset, according to his declaration. Similar ICE spending has faced scrutiny. 

In that same declaration, Briseno said he was not aware of any additional copies of the dataset, but noted that recent searches had “highlighted technological difficulties of making a representation that every possible variation of the file has been searched for and located.” He added, “ICE will continue to make good faith efforts to delete any copies that may be found in the future.”

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice is asking the judge to expand his order to allow ICE to receive data on a broader category of noncitizens, potentially including all immigrants who are not legal permanent residents, citizens, or who do not hold another form of permanent status.

The Democratic attorneys general wrote in their motion that “ICE’s inability to identify Medicaid records in its possession undercuts any claim that the agency should be entitled to more access to that data.” They also wrote that “each successive revelation of a violation of the Order makes it more difficult for Plaintiff States to have confidence in Defendants’ ability to maintain and secure this data in compliance with the Order.”

They continued, “More difficult for Plaintiff States to communicate assurances to Medicaid providers, enrollees (and their counsel), and the public at large about the privacy and confidentiality of their healthcare data.” Similar concerns about accountability have arisen as DHS quietly shuts down the only office investigating abuse in immigration detention.

Palantir provided the following statement to NPR: “Our customers control their own data and manage access to that data. When Palantir employees are granted access to a customer’s dataset, it is solely to help integrate and analyze that data, which is what our software does, not to store it or use it for our own purposes. Palantir can confirm that the dataset in question was purged pursuant to government instruction.”

DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the transfer of data to Palantir. California deputy attorney general Anna Rich stated in a declaration that when plaintiffs asked federal officials what steps were taken to ensure Palantir and other contractors had purged the data, officials said the data had been shared over a Microsoft Teams chat and that the shared data was deleted from the chat. 

Rich’s declaration included a document obtained through discovery showing a redacted transcript of what appears to be ICE personnel asking Palantir to delete the file.

At an April 30 hearing, Chhabria had warned that the federal government would not be able to continue using Medicaid data for deportation efforts if it continued improperly sharing the data of citizens and legal immigrants. “If the federal government cannot be sufficiently careful then it can’t use the information, ok?” Chhabria said, court filings show.