JULY 18, 2026
ICE shared improperly obtained Medicaid data with Palantir, court filings reveal
After Medicaid officials improperly shared data on millions of people with immigration officials in January, ICE then shared that data with data analytics firm Palantir, according to court filings made public on July 17. The disclosure came in a motion filed by more than 20 Democratic attorneys general who sued the Trump administration over a data-sharing agreement between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and ICE. Palantir operates an app called ELITE, used by ICE agents to display the addresses of noncitizens who may be subject to deportation.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, appointed by former President Obama, had ruled in December that health officials could share certain Medicaid data — including home addresses, dates of birth, and immigration status — about immigrants without lawful status from the plaintiff states. He temporarily paused that data sharing in late May after federal officials acknowledged that CMS had shared data with ICE in January that exceeded what the court order permitted. One dataset included refugees in Minnesota who were U.S. citizens; another, transferred on January 7, contained data on millions of people, including those in the country legally.
ICE was directed to delete the improperly shared data, but subsequent court filings revealed additional instances of non-compliance. A Justice Department filing last week said CMS inadvertently reshared the January 7 dataset with ICE during an effort to transmit data from states not party to the lawsuit. ICE Section Chief Alberto Briseno stated in a declaration that the file was deleted after discovery and was not used for law enforcement purposes — but a day later, Briseno revealed a broader search had found that roughly half a dozen users still retained a copy of that dataset.
Briseno said in his most recent declaration that he was not aware of any additional copies, but acknowledged "technological difficulties of making a representation that every possible variation of the file has been searched for and located," adding that "ICE will continue to make good faith efforts to delete any copies that may be found in the future."