Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley today demanded that the federal departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and
Homeland Security (DHS) as well as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) immediately stop unlawfully transferring Medicaid data to DHS and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“Congress has a responsibility to ensure that the personal health information of the tens of millions of people who rely on Medicaid is protected and that HHS and CMS comply with federal court orders,,” the Oregon senators wrote HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Dr. Mehmet Oz, CMS Administrator. “Medicaid enrollees have a right to expect that their private information will be safeguarded and not employed for mass deportation campaigns.”
“Each person whose information was inappropriately disclosed is entitled to know what happened to it, and Congress is entitled to know how a federal agency came to violate the same court order three times in six months,” the senators added. “And HHS must suspend all Medicaid data transfers to ICE and DHS pending a comprehensive review of HHS’s controls and the court’s continuing oversight.”
In July 2025, CMS and ICE entered into an agreement to give immigration enforcement officials access to the personal data of millions of Medicaid enrollees, including immigration status and addresses. In December 2025, a federal court set guardrails on the types of information CMS could share with ICE. HHS has now acknowledged that it transferred protected Medicaid information—including data on U.S. citizens—to immigration enforcement authorities three times in violation of the court order. These data transfers form part of a larger pattern of information-sharing to advance the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda, at the expense of Americans’ privacy and the statutory protections Congress built into these programs.
The lawmakers request answers to questions by Friday, September 4, 2026, including:
- How many Medicaid records of U.S. citizens or nationals have HHS or CMS provided to ICE or DHS since January 2025?
- Can HHS or CMS identify every transfer of Medicaid data it has made to ICE or DHS since June 2025?
- Which HHS or CMS officials are responsible for overseeing the transfer of Medicaid data to other agencies?
Wyden has been leading the charge in the Senate to sound the alarm on privacy violations by Trump’s ICE. Earlier this year, he demanded answers from the Treasury Department about sharing taxpayer data with ICE. He also led 70 congressional Democrats, including Merkley, in calling for an investigation into ICE and DHS buying Americans’ location data without a warrant.
Previously, Merkley and Wyden introduced the ICE Out of Our Faces Act to limit ICE’s use of facial recognition technology.
Wyden led today’s letter with U.S. Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). In addition to Merkley, other senators signing the letter are Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).
The letter to HHS and CMS is here (PDF). The letter to DHS is here (PDF).
A web version of this release is here.