ICE is getting unprecedented access to Medicaid data
wired.com
wired.com
Most of these departments have rules about how they use our data. ICE now gobbles it all up and can use it without rules by a department that operates with little regard and lots of exceptions to typical protections for citizens afforded by the constitution.
The majority in SCOTUS does not seem to care (it’s ok as long as their guy does it). Whatever rules we thought there were seem to be out the window because someone magically moved data or ICE got to do it or so on ...
This is roughly on the level of post Pearl Harbor internement of Japanese people, with potential to grow larger.
This is what a real deep state looks like. “He who smelt it dealt it” seems to be a natural law.
Can you contextualize this comment? Are you saying it shouldnt be so difficult? Or that the government should have to jump through the same hoops? Or?
Almost the entire US constitution applies to non-citizens in the country, with some small exceptions like voting and holding public office.
It's true that if you applied prior judicial standards that its crystal clear the constitution and bill of rights extend beyond just protecting citizens. Same for the law. However, with a lot of the recent rulings it seems that now "might makes right" and "if the president does it, it's not illegal".
Both the judicial and legislative bodies have ceded nearly all their power to the executive. We're in for a bumpy ride.
Reagan ramped it up by pulling some similar moves to what Trump is doing. The Chevron doctrine came from Reagan admin running the EPA into the ground.
[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/30/trump-federalist-so...
9/11 just gave the bigwigs the excuse to tell the masses that if you didn't agree you are a terrorist.
I'm not going further because its a quagmire.
If the people carry something and change their minds and moods, have fun holding back that energy with a creaking dam made of paper. Even this Ice nightmare, was voted in democratic and will be one day, when the mood has swung again, pushed back by the people in some colorful revolution.
Average citizens are commenting on YT and FB.
Most citizens are average and I don't see mass strikes while things are getting stripped away.
This is sort of a classic example of a slippery slope, FWIW. As soon as you deny anybody due process, the category of people that applies to will just constantly expand.
Now, there's basically nothing stopping immigration officials from immediately deporting anybody they want, citizen, non-citizen, illegal or legal immigrant.
What nonsense. We have the courts. There must be a valid determination made that a person entered illegally for expedited deportation to apply. Due process applies to that determination - if it is not made correctly then sue. But more importantly why on earth would it not be made correctly? If you can’t prove that you’re a US citizen then something is very wrong.
Are you arguing about the way it should be or making a statement about the way things currently are?
Without it, the executive gets to just say "that person shouldn't be here" and they can send them wherever the whims of the government are in the day.
Due process is how someone says "Hey government, you've made a mistake".
It isn't just due process. It's "I'm a US citizen, you can't legally deport me" Due process is what enables making that argument at all.
4th because of "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" A warrantless search and seizure seems to be pretty unconstitutional. (See: ICE rolling up to farms and home depots and arresting everyone brown there)
The 8th
> nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
It seems both cruel and unusual to imprison people in concentration camps without enough food or water. It further seems pretty cruel to send people to countries not of origin known to torture. (See SECOT and Alligator Alcatraz)
The 9th
> The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
This amendment is rarely applied which is a shame. It is the amendment that grants rights not listed by the constitution. It's what justifies the existence of human rights. It should not be controversial, but it seems like people should have the right to not be victims of genocide. Which is what mass deportation based on race ultimately is. (Homan is pretty open about race being the primary tool used to determine who's here illegally)
But beyond that, laid out in law is how deportation should function. That's where the actual process is laid out and that's what the executive is trying to avoid by rushing deportations.
You put that between parentheses as if it was just a detail, but it is the fundamental question that nobody is talking about: what happens after their guy is gone?
Are they really ok with president AOC getting all of Trump’s powers? Or do they secretly hope democracy in the U.S. comes to a halt?
Hope? They're working on it. And they're not being particularly secretive about it.
I personally can't think of many ways to be more blatant than that.
1. Most of the federal judges and SCOTUS will overturn bits and pieces of executive power once a Democrat tries to use them. See Biden and school loan forgiveness. They firmly believe that Thomas and Alito will retire during this administration, and they hope Sotomayor or Kagan retires or dies. I’ve also heard noise about impeaching Barrett.
2. Democrats are too skittish to use executive power to do anything revolutionary with it. Even when they had a trifecta during the first Obama term they barely did anything with it.
3. Regardless of the other two points, it’s very unlikely for the Republicans to lose control of House and Senate again, and the Senate can revert to being effective when the executive is a Democrat. A Republican House can constantly submit articles of impeachment and a Democrat president will get bogged down dodging the accusations, even if they’re spurious.
This.
A lot of the focus these days is on SCOTUS, but most of what Trump is doing was already permitted by law for the executive branch well before he came into office. The real question is: Why didn't past presidents utilize that power that they clearly had?
The two parties have different platforms and have material differences in the way they govern, but the oligarchs that fund both sides of the aisle ultimately want the same thing - more money and power at the expense of the working class. Both sides are not the same, but both sides _are_ complicit.
That said, you'll notice that a lot of the whataboutism in this comments section tries to equivocate the policy of the two sides. It obviously false, but it's purposeful in that it's trying to bait responses that correct the record of the Democrats. A response that instead advocates for specific policy is much more productive and derails the attempt at making the conversation about red vs blue.
It’s relatively easy for them to hold a close margin in the Senate, demographically speaking, and if internal migration patterns continue the number of “safely conservative” House districts will continue to rise.
They aren't even being remotely secretive about it.
I can confidently predict that whatever out-the-arse-shadow-docket rulings SCOTUS have made for Trump will suddenly not apply to a Democratic president and the office will be hamstrung by executive limits pretty darn toot suite.
An argument can be made after things like the second Iraq war that we have already entered the decadent empire phase of US history and the President effectively does have a great deal of dictatorial power. It's not supposed to be possible to wage a war like that without a congressional declaration, making such wars a pretty huge abdication of power by the legislative branch. If the President can just start a war on a whim, that power can be used to drag along the entire rest of the government.
Now, with ICE, we are establishing a lawless executive branch police force. This is just the unilateral power of the President to wage war coming home and being applied to domestic affairs. It will soon be possible, if it isn't already, for the President to order their own independent police to do anything, and if it is considered illegal the power of the pardon can be used to make that go away. The arbitrary power of the pardon is a pretty awesome power when you think about it.
When the ratchet gets far enough down this path we may indeed see a president remain in power forever like Xi Xinpeng. Trump may or may not be that person. If it's not him it might be the next, or the next. It could just as easily be a left-wing populist demagogue as a right-wing one depending on which way the winds happen to be blowing when the final ratchet click happens.
Rome continued to exist for quite some time after its Republic collapsed, but it was definitely the beginning of the end.
Well plain 'rules' are going to be firmly within the executive's discretion to change. So what you need is statutes.
Statutes might not help much though, due to the immunity/pardon hack. And we may even be seeing SCOTUS reexamine if the president is bound by statute.
This is fine.
I doubt they'd care if a democratic president wanted to do the exact same thing...
Their job isn't to be benevolent.
Their job is to determine what is ACCORDING to the laws. The reality is, many legal protections only apply to US citizens - and it is EXPLICITLY for these reasons that they do.
The Privacy Act of 1974 applies only to citizens. The Patriot Act opened up a can of worms ripe for abuse that will probably never be sealed.
The executive branch can almost get away with murder by saying, "Well, we thought they were a terrorist, so..." Which does appear to be the defense they're trying to set up, saying anyone in any, way, shape or form related to Mexican gangs is a terrorist.
The Supreme Court doesn't really seem to be exceptionally awful.
They're obviously bias, and have been for a very long time, if you look at how they vote.
But the larger problem is that we have bad laws.
It's not the Supreme Court's job to override laws passed by congress because they're terrible or anti-American.
It's our job as voters to start caring about what matters.
Of course they would. They literally blocked Biden's student loan relief, calling it unconstitutional. These people are not there because they are exceptional legal scholars or because they established themselves as outstanding judges in their previous appointments. The six majority justices are there to help their side wield power, pure and simple. And they understand that part of that job is making it difficult for the other side to wield power. Because only their side is legitimate, you see.
> The Supreme Court doesn't really seem to be exceptionally awful.
The are exceptionally, extremely, extraordinarily awful. When the DC circuit court ruled on presidential immunity, legal scholars across the land pointed to the ruling as the probable last word, given how sterling the ruling was. Many were shocked that the Supreme Court even took the case up afterward. After all, what more was there to say? To have the SCOTUS overrule two centuries of established precedent in making the entire Executive branch above criminal law shocked just about everyone - this entirely for the purpose of keeping a single man out of jail.
> It's not the Supreme Court's job to override laws passed by congress because they're terrible or anti-American.
That is exactly their job, if said laws are unconstitutional.
It's not their job to do things that are good or nice, it's to determine legality.
This is just explicitly not true in our constitution. If you're a textualist, you're not allowed to believe this - sorry.
Yes, but law enforcement agencies can typically be granted access for investigations, so long as the information is used only for such investigations. This is how CSAM distributors are hunted down. They don't literally need to amass evidence for each and every suspect and then get a warrant: they have a legally recognized enforcement directive, and so can perform surveillance of information sources where that people breaking those laws can be caught. Or in this case, they may have imperfect information on a variety of actual suspects, but not enough to find them or build a case. Medicaid data may provide those clues.
You can see the bones of a stronger limit during drafting (as "required" by warrants), but then weakened to allow mere "administrative requests".
> Law Enforcement Purposes. Covered entities may disclose protected health information to law enforcement officials for law enforcement purposes under the following six circumstances, and subject to specified conditions: (1) as required by law (including court orders, court-ordered warrants, subpoenas) and administrative requests; (2) to identify or locate a suspect, fugitive, material witness, or missing person; (3) in response to a law enforcement official's request for information about a victim or suspected victim of a crime; (4) to alert law enforcement of a person's death, if the covered entity suspects that criminal activity caused the death; (5) when a covered entity believes that protected health information is evidence of a crime that occurred on its premises; and (6) by a covered health care provider in a medical emergency not occurring on its premises, when necessary to inform law enforcement about the commission and nature of a crime, the location of the crime or crime victims, and the perpetrator of the crime.
https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/laws-reg...
Language in the agreement says it will allow ICE to access personal
information such as home addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, banking
data, and social security numbers. (Later on in the agreement, what ICE is
allowed to access is defined differently, specifying just “Medicaid
recipients” and their sex, ethnicity, and race but forgoing any mention of IP
or banking data.) The agreement is set to last two months. While the document
is dated July 9, it is only effective starting when both parties sign it,
which would indicate a 60-day span from July 15 to September 15.Just think: If I "only" steal names and address from the psych ward, that's still a breach.
Two thirds of those required to report to camps for internment, per the Executive Order, were US citizens.
Ronald Reagan was a trash goblin who destroyed our economy to enrich the wealthy.
So was Bill Clinton.
George Bush was a war criminal who indiscriminately bombed brown people.
So was Obama.
Hillary Clinton was a huckster con artist who worked for her wealthy friends.
So is Trump.
Your dichotomy is a trap. There are no good guys because the system itself is rigged in favor of militaristic capitalist oligarchs, which is the actual problem.
Point is, an Executive Order issued by the President did this to natural born citizens of the United States based on their ethnic background.
Yes, because he has a pattern of staking out one extreme position and then doing something slightly less extreme; but both of which would have been unthinkable when laws and due process meant something.
And also, yes, because joking around is something you do on your own time and when you’re a child. Like not wanting your pilot to announce his intention to do some aerobatic maneuvers on an airline flight. Whether they carry it out or not is almost beside the point.
First, the situation itself is always serious, because because nobody in that kind of position should ever be "joking" about such a thing.
Second, this guy's not joking. A threat does not become a joke simply because it is weak/unlikely or delivered while chuckling.
We are all provisional citizens at this point.
But, of course, you already know that. So why bother with the theatrics?
also the us govt did pay the hospital to treat these people
To be fair, other billionaires paid for this one; and this one is still not listening to the people.
No one was forced to vote for Clinton and nominating a loser of the primary would have set an awful precedent.
To muse he would have beaten Trump is like saying the Bills could have beaten the Eagles in the Super Bowl. Maybe they could have, but they didn't beat the Chiefs. It's not a forgone conclusion that he would have beaten Trump, but even so it really doesn't matter because he lost in the primaries
That's why in France, for example, it's illegal for the government to keep track of people's race or religion. When the Nazis occupied France they used such documents to figure out who the Jews were.
We don't even have the concept of “race”.
I’m pretty sure the German government has a list of people enrolled in the German socialized medical system.
You know, the same federal government that refused to assign a special prosecutor to the Epstein files. You can rest assured Apple and the Fed are very interested in protecting the children. Anyone who refuses to allow that sort of process is probably a criminal anyways, right?
As long as lists of people are useful they will be created, and as long as our government is unaccountable to the people and the law those lists will be at risk of being abused by the state for other purposes.
But here in glorious America, people are asking "This is inevitable, how can we starve the government more, so that it cannot hurt us when it eventually tries to?"
It's telling that, every time there's an election, we keep hearing complaints about who can vote, because its citizens decided that the government shouldn't keep track of who are its citizens and where they live. In most other countries it's the government's job to issue a photo ID to every citizen, but no, here in America that sounds too convenient and it must be some evil big-gov agenda.
You just know this goes beyond illegal immigrants. This is some Gestapo shit right there.
The article notes that a former information security lead from the VA says the SORN needs to be updated for this specific ICE/CMS agreement and has not been. Clearly that fact is a disputed.
The ACLU argues that the sharing is only allowed if it contributes to the accuracy of Medicare or Medicaid, administers a federal health benefits program, or is necessary to implement a federally funded health benefits program. Im not sure if this it true (sharing only allowed in these cases) but if so it seems reasonable that detecting fraud would contribute to the accuracy and integrity of Medicaid. Furthermore, ICE does administer a federal health benefits program (IHSC [1]), so the basis for the ACLU's objection really seems unfounded, although the administration doesnt cite this basis and is quite upfront that its about identifying illegal aliens.
Just a quick check of the official website to try and get onto Medicaid in WA state shows that it requires a social security number and citizenship information: https://www.wahealthplanfinder.org/us/en/health-coverage/get...
https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/enrollment-strategies/down...
so ultimately there is some source of non-citizen data to be gleaned
Just because it's illegal doesn't mean it isn't happening. From a May 25, 2025 article on the official CMS website: "The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced today increased federal oversight to stop states from misusing federal Medicaid dollars to cover health care for individuals who are in the country illegally. Under federal law, federal Medicaid funding is generally only available for emergency medical services for noncitizens with unsatisfactory immigration status who would otherwise be Medicaid-eligible, but some states have pushed the boundaries, putting taxpayers on the hook for benefits that are not allowed."
From this article: https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/cms-increasing-o...
Both of those sources are just bullshit propaganda. There are no 'open borders'. You're just being manipulated.
They also are really poor about citing evidence for their claims. The best thing they've got is a vague '124 percent more' with no real figures, and 'some states have pushed boundaries'.
If they want to tighten policy around what qualifies as emergency care then be my guest. The rest of this is just pushing a bullshit narrative.
It’s a class war. Once they’ve run out of immigrants to harass and deport, they’ll be going after the poor.
- significantly raising taxes on imported goods - letting ACA subsidies expire - reducing access to medicaid - allowing medical debt on credit reports - resuming collections/garnishment for student loans - reducing options for student loan repayment / forgiveness
they're going after the poor
That's just a bonus feature
The tariffs serve 2 purposes:
1. They can replace income taxes and protect the wealthy (per their reasoning)
2. They are a tool for power over other countries and a mechanism to compel them to pay personal tribute to The King of America™
Get power => cause market instability, make trades and bets on volatility (or have your friends do it) => offshore your gains
Some states even allow legal temporary visa visitors like students to sign up for their state level funded medicaid. NY is constitutionally required to do so.
ICE however is making a play to obtain all of that state level data.
I found the whole idea very prone to abuse and posted about it on social media, and the whole thread flew into people fighting about Obamacare… but I still think I was right.
The older I get, the more I become a strong proponent of keeping data out of the hands of the people who can murder you without recourse.
It doesn't any more.
Sure, the protagonist sees hidden bunkers with weird science, but the average person? It's hard find work, their votes don't seem to matter, there's no real privacy anymore, and nobody will honor the warranty on the little floor-cleaner robot.
Also, Deus Ex and the Unreal Engine had a GL renderer with worked amazingly great with Wine back in the day, it was one of the best games to run in early 00's. Yeah, the game was propietary and yadda, yadda; but there's the Surreal engine (libre implementation of Unreal1) on the works.
Another game on dystopias which looks parodical but it's heavily reality grounded it's Liberal Crime Squad. As an European I know near nil about the USA goverment branches and how the goverment it's built, but that game taught me the process exceptionally well. And, yes, it's a must play giving how current politics are going:
https://github.com/Kamal-Sadek/Liberal-Crime-Squad
It has an Augmentation system a la Deus Ex too.
(peak covid was 3000 deaths per day)
This country is going to get really horrific, really really fast
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/gop-gives-ice-massive-budg...
> Tom Homan, as well as Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have made very clear that they intend on spending the billions in this bill. Tom Homan said this week that they want to arrest 7,000 people every day for the remainder of the administration
lol ppl here would be singing a different tune if 7000 people per day were entering this country on H1B visa.
We are very, very far away from a state where the government doesn't know all about you. Im not sure what we should do about that fact. Im not simply arguing for an inevitable erosion of privacy on one end or soveriegn citizenship, for example, on the other. It's just that you would have to rewind way back. Social security, income taxes, etc.
That is absolutely not true. They occupy very different philosophical spaces and have very different proclivities for extrajudicial acts.
> Democrats … buy votes by promising handouts
Didn’t Mr. Musk do something akin to this in Wisconsin?
> Democrats want to make it illegal to protect myself from a violent attacker.
I couldn’t speak for every elected Democrat but few, if any, stake out a position anywhere close to what you wrote.
This will result in thousands of people in cages for undetermined amounts of time with no due process. It's unconstitutional whether or not you're here legally. Democrats are not forcing Republicans to build outdoor prisons to house farm workers and their families.
Not to mention that there are a number of people getting caught up in this that are in the US legally, under asylum claims or birthright citizenship.
Democrats attempted to pass immigration reform twice in 2024 and Republicans shot it down for reasons including the asinine lack of border wall funding.
The impasse is largely that Democrats want to provide a reasonable path to citizenship for people who have already been living and working here (many of whom have been here for decades and have american-born children). Republicans will not budge and chose to impose suffering directly.
You're going to have to explain what you mean by that: people in the US have a right to move to any state they want, and the state they move to has little say in the matter. The most the government in Texas could do is instruct and incentivize police agencies in Texas to hold illegals till ICE can pick them up, but that only works when ICE is willing to pick them up and deport them.
(Yes, there are employers in Texas that benefit from employing illegal immigrants: those employers lobby the Federal government; they wouldn't bother lobbying the Texas state government.)
> But what happened was blue states let them in
which doesn't make sense, there's like 1 "blue" state on the border
states didn't do anything to enable it, the federal government did, and the democrat controlled government tried to reform immigration multiple times
What an intellectually dishonest take.
Not trying to make a political statement here just pointing out oddities between reported data online perception.
Note* this data could be inaccurate ?
“ Deportation Numbers: While arrests have risen sharply, the administration's impact on actual deportation rates is still being assessed. According to the Migration Policy Institute, the Trump administration is on track to deport roughly half a million people this year, which is below the target of one million annually and less than the 685,000 recorded in fiscal year 2024 under President Joe Biden.”
Right? /s
At the very least they're using federal funds for administrative costs.
> Medicaid, state and federally government-funded health care coverage for the country’s poorest, is largely available only to some non-citizens, including refugees and asylum seekers, survivors of human trafficking, and permanent residents. Some states, like New York, provide Medicaid coverage for children and pregnant people, regardless of their immigration status. States report their Medicaid expenditures and data to the federal government, which reimburses them for some of the costs.
The Trump admin is aggressively deporting refugees and asylum seekers who entered legally.
As a related aside, Federally-funded California clinics are about to start requiring proof of citizenship. This is causing a panic.
Also, due to the massive cost of providing care to undocumented migrants, Newsom is about to freeze all registrations for Medi-Cal (so the message is get in now before the gates close). He's also proposing charging undocumented migrants a modest premium.