Palantir ICE Medicaid data shared beyond court limits
Immigration and Customs Enforcement shared improperly obtained Palantir ICE Medicaid data with the analytics firm after CMS wrongly handed over records on millions of people in January, court filings show. Attorneys general say the transfer tied to Palantir's ELITE app deepens privacy and compliance concerns.
Key Takeaways
- CMS improperly sent Medicaid records on millions of people to ICE in January, including people in the country legally and, in one Minnesota dataset, U.S. citizens.
- ICE then shared that January dataset with Palantir, whose ELITE app helps agents display addresses of noncitizens who may face deportation.
- Judge Vince Chhabria paused CMS-ICE data sharing in May and ordered deletions; officials later admitted further improper resharing and leftover copies.
- More than 20 Democratic attorneys general argue ICE's handling undercuts any bid for broader Medicaid data access.
What did ICE share with Palantir?
According to NPR reporting on new federal court filings, Medicaid officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services improperly shared data about millions of people with ICE in January. ICE then passed that data to Palantir.
Palantir operates ELITE, an app ICE agents use to show addresses of noncitizens who may be subject to deportation. The disclosure surfaced in a Thursday motion from more than 20 Democratic attorneys general challenging the CMS-ICE data-sharing arrangement. Readers following Future Tech & AI Wonders will recognize the pattern: sensitive government datasets meeting commercial analytics platforms.
Why does this Palantir ICE Medicaid data matter?
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ruled in December that health officials could share certain Medicaid details—such as home addresses, dates of birth, and immigration status—about immigrants without lawful status from the states that sued. In late May he temporarily paused CMS-ICE sharing for immigration enforcement after officials admitted the January transfers went beyond what the order allowed.
One Minnesota refugee dataset included U.S. citizens. A Jan. 7 transfer covered millions of people, including those in the country legally. ICE was ordered to delete the improperly obtained data. Chhabria set an August hearing to clarify which categories of noncitizens' data may lawfully be shared.
In an April 30 hearing, Chhabria warned that if the federal government "cannot be sufficiently careful then it can't use the information."
Did officials fully delete the improper files?
Last week the Justice Department said CMS again inadvertently reshared with ICE the millions-name dataset first sent in January, during an effort to share data from states not in the lawsuit. ICE Homeland Security Investigations section chief Alberto Briseno said personnel deleted that file and it was not used for law enforcement.
A day later, a broader search found that half a dozen users still had a copy of the Jan. 7 dataset. Briseno said he was unaware of further copies but cited "technological difficulties" in assuring every variation had been found, pledging continued deletion efforts.
When plaintiffs asked how contractors purged the data, California deputy attorney general Anna Rich reported that officials said it had been shared over a Microsoft Teams chat and deleted from the chat. Discovery included a redacted transcript appearing to show ICE asking Palantir to delete the file. Palantir and DHS did not immediately respond to NPR's comment requests.
Separately, POLITICO reported an earlier HHS blunder in which Medicaid enrollee data was inadvertently sent to ICE; DOJ said in that instance the file was not ingested or used for enforcement. The Democratic attorneys general now argue ICE's inability to account for Medicaid records undercuts any claim that the agency should get more access, while DOJ asks the court to widen the categories of noncitizens whose data ICE may receive.