EXCLUSIVE: ICE, DOGE Seek Sensitive Medicare Data As Immigration Crackdown Intensifies

ICE HQ — he U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters in Washington. (Pete Kiehart/For The Washington Post)

By Hannah Natanson, Rachel Roubein and Dan Diamond

Trump immigration officials and the U.S. DOGE Service are seeking to use a sensitive Medicare database as part of their crackdown on undocumented immigrants, according to a person familiar with the matter and records obtained by The Washington Post.

The database, which is managed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and includes reams of health and personal information, contains addresses sought by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, according to the person and documents reviewed by The Post. Current and former health officials said they were deeply concerned by what appears to be an unprecedented use of the Medicare database as part of immigration enforcement efforts, and they were unsure whether it was legal.

The requests to CMS, made over the past month, came from ICE officials and involved DOGE, a team that is led by billionaire Elon Musk and has sought access to sensitive data systems across the federal government, according to the records and the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

ICE is trying to track down a list of immigrants the Trump administration has deemed illegally present in the country, the person and the records show. To aid in that effort, ICE — in coordination with DOGE — is asking CMS to check the immigrants’ Social Security numbers against a Medicare claims database to determine the individuals’ addresses, according to the person and the records.

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