This just seems like a power grab to empower federal level personal thugs for the executive branch.
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 ...
dmix · 2h ago
> lots of exceptions to typical protections for citizens afforded by the constitution
Almost the entire US constitution applies to non-citizens in the country, with some small exceptions like voting and holding public office.
TimorousBestie · 2h ago
You’re technically correct, but in the last few decades a great deal of legal scholarship has gone into convincing the relevant parties that this isn’t so.
avgDev · 1h ago
On paper, but the average citizen and current admin disagree. The check & balances also don't seem to work.
lsidllljjjj · 49m ago
I'm an average citizen and I believe non-citizens have rights. And so do most of the people I know. So if you believe that, then recognize that that's just the consensus in your clique.
skybrian · 1h ago
Does anything other than due process rights help for people facing deportation?
nonethewiser · 44m ago
Im confused. What else could there possibly be than due process? Force?
xdennis · 1h ago
There are some differences for illegal immigrants, though. For example they don't have the right to due process under expedited removal (passed by Bill Clinton in 1996).
wombatpm · 47m ago
How do you prove you are not an illegal immigrant when picked up off the street? Surely there must be some due process around the determination of your illegal status.
empath75 · 58m ago
This is a little misleading. Under Clinton, they could basically just turn them around at a port of entry. Eventually (2004) this was expanded to people within 100 miles of a border within 2 weeks of entering the country, and then in 2020 they _dramatically_ expanded this to people anyone who has been here for less than 2 years, and that has not been tested in court, really.
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.
ItCouldBeWorse · 2h ago
Turns out the law is just two in the ink, one in the pinky finger in the air "I swear!". But in the end, the law is in people, the society is in people, not in paper, not in officials, not in institutions.
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.
phkahler · 58m ago
Since medicade wasn't established by the constitution, how do resident aliens get coverage? Maybe they do, maybe they don't. I'd like to know.
wombatpm · 38m ago
If you want to go back to people dying in the streets because they are poor I guess that’s OK. But at some point it affects the health of everyone.
onlyrealcuzzo · 44m ago
> The majority in SCOTUS does not seem to care (it’s ok as long as their guy does it).
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.
jewayne · 10m ago
> I doubt they'd care if a democratic president wanted to do the exact same thing...
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.
wlesieutre · 2h ago
Getting access to Medicaid data for public health research is a giant pain in the ass with layers upon layers of red tape and IRBs and training about how you are allowed to handle it.
fnordpiglet · 2h ago
Only if it’s done in compliance. There was been little to show this administration follows the constitution, laws, or judicial orders let alone regulation. Especially when it comes to Stephen Miller there’s a significant “move fast and break the law” effort knowing judicial or legislative remedy can take a long time and is not assured given the penetration of captured justices and congressional independence. Especially in something like this where you have to establish standing, do discovery, etc, it’s an uphill battle to ensure compliance and the out of compliance stuff happens behind closed doors. With most of the federal government oversight functions either gutted or entirely captured by politically partisan sycophants, I would not hold my breath expecting any boundaries or relief.
This is what a real deep state looks like. “He who smelt it dealt it” seems to be a natural law.
wlesieutre · 1h ago
Yes, I am assuming that ICE is not being held to the same (or any) standards and this is a real heap of bullshit
nonethewiser · 40m ago
>Getting access to Medicaid data for public health research is a giant pain in the ass with layers upon layers of red tape and IRBs and training about how you are allowed to handle it.
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?
cosmicgadget · 2h ago
> The majority in SCOTUS does not seem to care
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.
michael1999 · 1h ago
I think HIPAA always had a carve-out for LE. Trump is lawless, but this might not be.
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?
moogly · 2h ago
> 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.
jpadkins · 55m ago
can you share some of these plans to halt democracy?
input_sh · 49m ago
Sure thing! If you go to Trump's official store (ridiculous statement on its own for a sitting president), you'll find a whole lot of "Trump 2028" merch.
I personally can't think of many ways to be more blatant than that.
davidcbc · 2h ago
If a democratic president is elected they will reverse their decisions until a GOP president is elected again.
colpabar · 2h ago
I doubt that very much. I think what will happen is that the dems will run on doing that, get elected to do that, and then not do any of it, and nobody will really care or even remember. Everything will be cool because it’ll be a cool dem president and all the problems will be the republicans fault, just like obama.
Steltek · 36m ago
We've seen the GOP reaction at a State level. When a Dem governor is about to take office, the GOP legislature passes sweeping bills to limit executive power and the about-to-be-former GOP Governor signs them.
TimorousBestie · 2h ago
I’m pretty tuned in to the conservative water cooler, and I’ve heard three realistic theories on post-Trump executive power. To be clear, these are real opinions I’ve heard self-described Trump voters espouse—not my opinions:
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.
BeetleB · 3m ago
> 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.
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?
stuaxo · 1h ago
Secretly?
zimpenfish · 2h ago
> Are they really ok with president AOC getting all of Trump’s powers?
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.
krapp · 2h ago
>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?
They aren't even being remotely secretive about it.
api · 59m ago
This isn't new at all and has been happening for decades, a continuous ratcheting up of Presidential and Executive Branch power since the dawn of the Cold War. Usually it's because of "national security," and it happens when both parties are in power. The march pretty much began with the National Security Act of 1947, though some might place it earlier with FDR and the New Deal. An argument can be made for both, with the left tending to blame the former and the right the latter. (I think the real answer is both to some extent but the National Security Act is the more significant of the two.)
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.
micromacrofoot · 2h ago
Indeed seems this way. Also consider the recent budget bill increased ICE's budget 3X and it's now more funded than the entire federal prison system.
This is roughly on the level of post Pearl Harbor internement of Japanese people, with potential to grow larger.
No comments yet
michael1999 · 1h ago
This sounded like a straight-forward HIPAA violation, but I checked. There's a carve out for LE.
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.
Additionally from the article the data seems limited to identification information and not medical information.
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.
diamond559 · 1h ago
You still think this is just about immigrants? They are coming for the dissenters next, they will just make excuses as to why.
Geeek · 1h ago
They are coming? They are already here. RE: What the president said about Rosie O'donnell last week. Norms have been eroded and we are now clearly in the laws-are-being-eroded territory.
djeastm · 9m ago
Correct. Rosie is an American citizen born in the US and Trump threatened to "revoke" her citizenship.
We are all provisional citizens at this point.
hcurtiss · 1h ago
What evidence do you have to believe that’s true?
pksebben · 1h ago
the 1950s comes to mind...
mrexroad · 1h ago
… and 2/19/1942.
Two thirds of those required to report to camps for internment, per the Executive Order, were US citizens.
bigyabai · 1h ago
Deportations without due-process, for a start. Why not deprive you of due process, too?
miltonlost · 1h ago
Trump just said he's going to try to take Rosie O Donnell's citizenship away.
phkahler · 53m ago
Do people still take his comments like that seriously?
ilikecakeandpie · 11m ago
Why wouldn't they? He's the president. As an official of the state he shouldn't say it if he doesn't mean it. The president isn't supposed to be fun or jokey
wombatpm · 40m ago
How are we to know which official statements repeatedly made by the President in public are True?
nozzlegear · 19m ago
Yes? Nothing about the prospect of him revoking the citizenship of one of his longtime bugbears seems unlikely at this point. The fact that we're even discussing the "will he, won't he, who knows" right now should be alarming.
padjo · 12m ago
The fact that people are willing to shrug and say he’s just joking is honestly pretty astounding.
zippothrowaway · 34m ago
The people of Greenland do. I'm old enough to remember when that was considered just "one of his jokes".
AlecSchueler · 30m ago
Do people still downplay the seriousness of statements like this?
kashunstva · 42m ago
> Do people still take his comments like that seriously?
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.
micromacrofoot · 17m ago
He's given us more reason to take him seriously than not at this point, you can probably measure it objectively. He's practically perfected "just kidding... unless"
loourr · 3h ago
The inevitable end of all government compiled lists of people
yongjik · 5m ago
In many other countries, people would be asking "This is horrible, how can we bring down this leader, and how can we ensure that it never happens again?"
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.
autoexec · 25m ago
It doesn't matter who compiles the lists anymore. Corporations will sell that data to the government (and anyone else willing to pay enough) or the government will march in and take it by force.
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.
mlinhares · 2h ago
Its the other way around, authoritarian governments will now compile even more and larger lists of everything they can possibly get from their citizens. North Korea would be proud of what this administration is doing.
bl0b · 1h ago
I think they meant 'end' as in the 'ultimate destination' rather than 'conclusion'.
skybrian · 2h ago
Trump getting elected wasn’t inevitable. There were unusual events during the 2016 election campaign that could have resulted in a different outcome if their timing had been different.
giantg2 · 2h ago
What they're saying is that government lists get abused. That's true no matter who is in power.
leptons · 2h ago
Sorry but both sides are not the same.
ilikecakeandpie · 6m ago
Yep. Anyone saying that they are is being intellectually dishonest and likely trying to feel better about doing nothing
gosub100 · 56m ago
Billionaires paid for Hillary, dems couldn't be bothered to listen to the people. Took 0 responsibility for it. Just took her campaign war chest and dumped it into a media smear campaign.
ilikecakeandpie · 7m ago
> dems couldn't be bothered to listen to the people
No one was forced to vote for Clinton and nominating a loser of the primary would have set an awful precedent.
kashunstva · 39m ago
> Billionaires paid for Hillary, dems couldn't be bothered to listen to the people.
To be fair, other billionaires paid for this one; and this one is still not listening to the people.
gosub100 · 34m ago
That's fair. I want people to understand it's not about my tribe vs your tribe. If the goal is to get idiots like Trump out of Washington, you must first remove money from politics. Then even if "your guy" doesn't get elected, you at least have a decent specimen installed who your party can work with. No one of average intelligence can even see that as an option. For this reason, the DNC is just as responsible for his election as the utterly deranged MAGA avatar.
bigyabai · 57m ago
Client Side Scanning tried to hash your files to help the government find any "child predators" using iPhone.
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?
xdennis · 1h ago
But the lists were compiled before Trump took office. Countries that have experience with totalitarianism don't make those lists to begin with.
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.
shakow · 32m ago
> it's illegal for the government to keep track of people's race
We don't even have the concept of “race”.
freedomben · 59m ago
We really don't seem to like learning the lessons of history
tiahura · 18m ago
Countries that have experience with totalitarianism don't make those lists to begin with.
I’m pretty sure the German government has a list of people enrolled in the German socialized medical system.
thr0waway001 · 40m ago
In what world is this not overreach for ICE? It is positively authoritarian.
You just know this goes beyond illegal immigrants. This is some Gestapo shit right there.
nonethewiser · 33m ago
The article states that the agreement claims compliance with a 2019 System of Records Notice, which it says allows the data to be used "to assist another federal or state agency."
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.
No government agency should get access to any private data without the appropriate protocols in place. Even more so considering the many issues surrounding ICE and their actions already, this will not improve things. Let alone the moral problem of trying to deport people which have been used by American companies for cheap labour to build the nation they want and supposedly are. Now of course that is ignoring the ludicrous view that undocumented migrants are the key issue, as opposed to so many other home made issues in the US, such as unfair wealth disparity, and a lack of fundamental basic rights for citizens.
tiahura · 16m ago
It’s not private data. It’s the government’s data.
tastyfreeze · 1h ago
That is the danger of central data collection. I know we like to pretend that federal departments are discrete units. At the end of the day the federal government owns the data. No subpoena needed if your boss already owns the data. You just have to ask nicely.
autoexec · 22m ago
The problem is even worse when that data is in private hands. One of the most common ways the government gets data they couldn't justify subpoenaing themselves is to simply hand over cash to corporations who have already collected that data for other uses. for example: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/08/how-law-enforcement-ar...
nonethewiser · 21m ago
I've never thought that controls prevented centralizing all our data, but incompetence and just bureaucratic bloat.
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.
OrvalWintermute · 21m ago
There is a report that shows Medicaid use by illegals is at least $4.5 billion a year [1] , and this is just Federal Medicaid alone.
If we assume that Medicaid, Medicare, and other types of abuse of our healthcare system is going on by illegals at similar or greater amounts, then I am all for the Administration getting data to address this problem.
US Taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook for illegals!
Personally, I'm ok paying 30 bucks a year to make sure fellow human beings in the US don't die of preventable causes in our streets.
nozzlegear · 9m ago
"Illegals" can't use full Medicaid, they can only receive emergency care which hospitals are required to give by law. That's what that $4.5B figure is – emergency care, labor, delivery, etc. Furthermore, undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes each year, including the payroll taxes that fund Medicaid and Medicare. Taxpayers aren't on the hook, because these immigrants are already paying in for services they can't even use.
kevingadd · 2h ago
I don't understand why ICE would need access to Medicaid data. You need to be a citizen or lawful permanent resident to access that program, not to mention all the other additional criteria. The idea of illegal immigrants somehow bypassing all the checks and balances successfully en masse feels a little silly to me.
They have a pamphlet available one more click away from the link you shared that gives detailed information on how undocumented immigrants can get free/reduced-cost health care, and what all of their options are: https://www.wahealthplanfinder.org/content/dam/wahbe-assets/...
kevingadd · 2h ago
This is not what the federal website for Medicaid says, though.
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."
Emergency Medicaid is provided due to EMTALA passed in 1986. There's nothing illegal about it.
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.
prometheus76 · 58m ago
I didn't say anything about emergency medicaid being illegal. What I did was present evidence that illegal immigrants do, indeed, use Medicaid funds in the form of emergency care, and I presume those are the records that are now being reviewed by ICE. Your original claim was that illegal immigrants don't get Medicaid, but you neglected to consider emergency medicaid funds.
arrosenberg · 2h ago
> I don't understand why ICE would need access to Medicaid data.
It’s a class war. Once they’ve run out of immigrants to harass and deport, they’ll be going after the poor.
yakz · 2h ago
They are:
- 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
pstuart · 2h ago
> 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™
I would love to be proven wrong because I'm hating this timeline.
autoexec · 19m ago
You forgot the third purpose which is market manipulation so that they can make huge profits in the stock market for themselves and their friends whenever they feel like it.
pksebben · 57m ago
I think it might even be more boring and straightforward than that.
Get power => cause market instability, make trades and bets on volatility (or have your friends do it) => offshore your gains
libraryatnight · 48m ago
The instability also damages trust in the US which loss of trust has its own economic and geopolitical fallout, so big wins for the Putins of the world.
standardUser · 1h ago
The important thing is they go after someone.
dmix · 2h ago
There's something called "Qualified Non-citizens", federal funding is prohibited for non-citizens but states could optionally cover it
so ultimately there is some source of non-citizen data to be gleaned
giantg2 · 2h ago
Some states have different requirements for undocumented persons. Most states permit medicaid for emergency situations. Some permit it for pregnant people.
thomas_ma · 2h ago
Are there any states where Medicaid funds "emergency situations" for people who are not otherwise eligible for Medicaid? I've never heard of that. EMTALA requires hospitals to treat anyone in emergency situations, but doesn't to my knowledge provide a mechanism to pay for those treatments. The patient still gets billed and hospital likely just doesn't get paid.
kevingadd · 2h ago
My understanding from reading the federal website is that this would not be Medicaid, it would be a different program. So they would not be in the Medicaid database, right?
tiahura · 14m ago
Finding illegal family members of enrollees.
delfinom · 56m ago
Several blue states expanded their medicaid programs to allow illegals. This was with the intention to pay for it with state dollars instead of federal dollars.
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.
klooney · 1h ago
Lots of people with no papers buy social security numbers so they can work legit jobs- and you could presumably get benefits too. Presumably they're looking for people who don't make sense- receiving benefits in two states, live in Minnesota but get benefits in Arizona, that sort of thing.
libraryatnight · 58m ago
I live in AZ and your example is awful because we're literally full up on Minnesota snowbirds 6 months out of the year.
ck2 · 2h ago
Imagine 7000 people per day being "disappeared" for the next 1200 days
(peak covid was 3000 deaths per day)
This country is going to get really horrific, really really fast
> 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
gosub100 · 44m ago
I have no problem with it. Send them back from whence they came.
micromacrofoot · 12m ago
That's not what they're preparing to do. They're building open air prisons for tens of thousands of people. It would take years to deport that many people. If they fill these things it will be a humanitarian disaster.
ck2 · 37m ago
They are deporting babies born here and have never lived anywhere else, some taken right out of the hospital
There are kids sitting right now in cages at Alligator Auschwitz without an adult for days and days and have never known any other country
Your parents were born in this country? How about their parents?
Because now they've run out of "criminals" they are putting people with legal status ("green cards") into the concentration-camps and when they run out of those next year who do you think they are going to keep busy with?
US Citizens have sat for days in prison before even given the chance to show citizenship, why don't you think that's going to happen to you eventually?
apwell23 · 1h ago
> Imagine 7000 people per day being "disappeared" for the next 1200 days
lol ppl here would be singing a different tune if 7000 people per day were entering this country on H1B visa.
jasonlotito · 2h ago
The amount of precedent being set here for big government and overreach is amazing. I'm not really surprised though that Conservatives and other small/limited governemnt people worked to enact this massive overreach of power.
davidcbc · 2h ago
The GOP is not a party of small/limited government people. It's a party of people who want absolute control and use the language of small/limited government to gain power.
gosub100 · 46m ago
Both parties are the same. Democrats want to make it illegal to protect myself from a violent attacker, enact legislation designed to block poor people from starting businesses, buy votes by promising handouts. They are both filthy and dirty and serve corporations.
kashunstva · 30m ago
> Both parties are the same.
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.
micromacrofoot · 14m ago
They're both status quo loving elites, but to say they're both the same is complete nonsense. The scale of these ICE camps is something we haven't seen for nearly 100 years. The level of access given to Musk and DOGE is absolutely disgusting. The storming of the Capitol was embarrassing.
buckle8017 · 2h ago
Well you gotta be a citizen for Medicaid, so they shouldn't find anything interesting.
Right? /s
charlimangy · 23m ago
Many poor children are on Medicaid. If you are born in the US to an undocumented person then you are a citizen and eligible for Medicaid. So they can use this info to find the undocumented parents of these kids and deport and disappear them. Then the kids have to chose between staying with their family or leaving the only country that have ever known.
cosmicgadget · 2h ago
Oh good, so they are raiding databases that predominatly contain personal information on people they aren't looking for.
ch4s3 · 2h ago
States can have supplements for non-citizens that don't use federal dollars and several do.
hcurtiss · 2h ago
It’s not all state dollars though. There’s a Medicaid match for ACA expansion populations. The OBBB reduces that match by 10% for states that expanded the population to include unauthorized immigrants. In Oregon, to maintain that program Oregonians are going to have to pony up hundreds of millions more per year. Much of the country is fine with that.
buckle8017 · 2h ago
Nobody believes those programs isolate state and federal funds effectively.
At the very least they're using federal funds for administrative costs.
adgjlsfhk1 · 2h ago
From TFA:
> 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.
aerostable_slug · 2h ago
California provides full coverage to undocumented migrants. This is who the administration is targeting.
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.
https://archive.ph/a9KaW
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 ...
Almost the entire US constitution applies to non-citizens in the country, with some small exceptions like voting and holding public office.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44606965
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?
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.
They aren't even being remotely secretive about it.
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.
This is roughly on the level of post Pearl Harbor internement of Japanese people, with potential to grow larger.
No comments yet
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...
We are all provisional citizens at this point.
Two thirds of those required to report to camps for internment, per the Executive Order, were US citizens.
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.
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.
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.
No one was forced to vote for Clinton and nominating a loser of the primary would have set an awful precedent.
To be fair, other billionaires paid for this one; and this one is still not listening to the people.
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?
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 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.
[1] https://www.ice.gov/detain/ice-health-service-corps
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.
If we assume that Medicaid, Medicare, and other types of abuse of our healthcare system is going on by illegals at similar or greater amounts, then I am all for the Administration getting data to address this problem.
US Taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook for illegals!
[1] Source: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60805
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...
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:
I would love to be proven wrong because I'm hating this timeline.Get power => cause market instability, make trades and bets on volatility (or have your friends do it) => offshore your gains
https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/enrollment-strategies/down...
so ultimately there is some source of non-citizen data to be gleaned
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.
(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
There are kids sitting right now in cages at Alligator Auschwitz without an adult for days and days and have never known any other country
Your parents were born in this country? How about their parents?
Because now they've run out of "criminals" they are putting people with legal status ("green cards") into the concentration-camps and when they run out of those next year who do you think they are going to keep busy with?
US Citizens have sat for days in prison before even given the chance to show citizenship, why don't you think that's going to happen to you eventually?
lol ppl here would be singing a different tune if 7000 people per day were entering this country on H1B visa.
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.
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.