Q REPORTS (EFE) Several Latino groups condemned an agreement between the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to share the data of 79 million users with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), stating that it could be used for raids and deportations.
The data transferred to ICE will be those of Medicaid recipients, a federal and state program that provides health coverage to low-income people. This information includes addresses and confidential information that could be used by Immigration agents in immigration raids.
“Sharing Medicaid data with ICE is a violation of trust and privacy. Nearly 80 million Americans could be affected. This measure turns healthcare into a weapon,” criticized the Latino organization Unidos US, one of the largest in the country, on the social media platform X.
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“Many working families will avoid Medicaid for fear of exposing them to ICE,” the organization continued, lamenting that this move could cause some families to not enroll in the program for fear of sharing their data, leaving thousands of children across the country without coverage.
And it concluded by asking Congress to halt the measure to protect families and all communities’ access to healthcare.
Approximately 26.8 million Latinos are enrolled in the Medicaid program, which was enacted in 1965 by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, according to the organization Voto Latino.
In a statement, this Latino group described the agreement with ICE as “an unprecedented violation of public trust” that raises “serious questions” about the interests of immigration agents in accessing this information.
“The use of healthcare data as a weapon to enforce immigration laws is a flagrant abuse of power and an alarming escalation of the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration enforcement measures,” it denounced.
It also noted that “more than 50% of Latino children receive health coverage from the ‘Children’s Health Insurance Program,’” which many of them access through Medicaid.
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The agreement with ICE comes amid a crusade by President Donald Trump’s administration against undocumented immigrants in the United States, which has led to the arrest and deportation of thousands of people.
The Administration has also suspended immigration programs that granted legal status to hundreds of thousands of migrants, such as TPS and humanitarian parole, leaving thousands of these beneficiaries in limbo and forcing them to leave the country they arrived in legally or remain in the shadows to avoid deportation.
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