‘Hungry for data’—pushing deportations, Trump admin dismantles privacy guardrails

There has been little controversy about whether the information immigrants provide to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in applying for “benefits” such as Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or humanitarian parole can be used for enforcement, for locating and detaining them. 

But can the information that low-income households must provide to federal/state programs like MedicAid (Medi-Cal) and SNAP (Food Stamps) be used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to target them, track them, and detain them?

Recent moves by the Trump administration have brought this issue to the fore, threatening the privacy and security of immigrants and of all Americans.

While federal agencies including DHS have tended to use their own administrative data with little oversight, legal guardrails under the Privacy Act largely prevented interagency exchange of individuals’ personal data, although there were limited exceptions (such as for use in criminal investigations or oversight to prevent fraud or misuse of funds).

Trump’s March Executive Order, “Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos” has removed those guardrails, threatening widespread and unwarranted government access to and misuse of individuals’ and households’ data.

Still more concerning is that this breach of privacy is exacerbated by increasingly sophisticated AI machine-learning systems. The ImmigrationOS software that Palantir is building for DHS, for example, will be able to browse and integrate mass amounts of information from multiple sources to learn how to better carry out assigned tasks such as targeting, tracking, and locating an immigrant for detention.

The more datasets available and the more information in each individual record that can be accessed, the “smarter” the AI system becomes.

Earlier this month the Associated Press reported that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) agreed to grant Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials access to enrollee data, which includes addresses, birthdates, ethnicity and social security numbers. (About 71 million Medicaid records and about 7 million CHIP records were turned over.)

But it doesn’t stop there. The Trump administration is also pressuring states to share data on food stamp recipients, some 40 million records.

Both datasets also include additional detailed information on entire households, including employment information and sensitive health data which cannot currently be accessed but which might be in the future. “USDA will leverage data-sharing across Federal and State systems to identify and rectify any ineligible, duplicate, or fraudulent SNAP enrollments or transactions,” reads a statement issued by the USDA, which oversees the SNAP program. “This includes verifying eligibility based on immigration status.”

The administration claims to be seeking access to these huge swathes of personally identifiable information only to avoid bureaucratic waste and combat fraud. In fact, these troves of data will almost certainly be used to refine AI models to better target and detain specific subgroups of immigrants.

ICE said as much, noting the data obtained from CMS will be used to “receive identity and location information on aliens identified by ICE,” according to the agreement obtained by the AP. That includes, for example, those whose legal status the administration has arbitrarily terminated (e.g. TPS beneficiaries from Venezuela, Haiti and Afghanistan).

States, meanwhile, are caught in the middle, having promised their residents that information provided to them to get health or food assistance will be confidential, only now to be forced to share that information with a government that has shown itself willing to go to extreme lengths to achieve its political ends.

“Getting food benefits will not affect you or your family’s immigration status,” reads the introduction to the combined form California uses for food stamp and Medi-Cal applicants. “Immigration information is private and confidential.”

At least it was, until recently.

Because SNAP and Medicaid (called Medic-Cal in California) are collaborative state-federal programs, states are required to share the data they collect in applications with their federal agency counterparts, which under the Privacy Act are prohibited from using the data for anything except to investigate cases of fraud.

On July 1, California and 20 other states sued the Trump administration, arguing its attempts to use this data to target individual immigrants is illegal.

“Millions of individuals’ health information was transferred without their consent, and in violation of federal law,” the complaint reads. “In doing so, the Trump administration silently destroyed longstanding guardrails that protected the public’s sensitive health data.”

Meanwhile, health care providers, social service programs, schools, and state government in immigrant-friendly states have joined immigrant and privacy-oriented advocacy organizations in opposing the Trump administration’s weaponization of administrative data. Their arguments are compelling.

Where does this all leave immigrants? Or the broader American public, for that matter?

DHS is hungry for more data and may succeed in securing the personal data for all Medicaid and SNAP applicants. The agency now has a foothold in important territory in the data universe and has made substantial progress in its wanton violation of regulations. There will, inevitably, be demands for still more. 

Confidentiality assurances to people filling out income tax returns, as well as SNAP and Medicaid applications, may be rapidly converted into broken promises.

Trust in government is a basic requirement for democracy. It has now been under rhetorical assault for years, even before the allegations that the 2020 election was stolen. What is frightening at this point is that the rhetoric has now been converted into action that inevitably undermines everyone’s trust.

Meanwhile, the courts, charged with maintaining the guardrails of privacy continue to bend to assertions of executive power, even as the administration continues to defy court orders. (It is estimated that about one-third of all court orders against the administration have been ignored.)

The battle to assure legal and responsible government use of the personal data it secures from individuals and constrain AI-based data analysis using such personally identifiable information is now well underway. The outcome will, inevitably, be crucial for the continuing viability of our democracy.

Edward Kissam is a leading researcher and advocate for strategies to deal with health issues impacting immigrant communities. He has led research on farmworker and immigrant issues sponsored by the Department of Labor, the Commission on Agricultural Workers, and the National Institute for Food and Agriculture. He is also a trustee of the WKF Charitable Giving Fund.