Judge limits ICE reach for immigrant data

Filed 8h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

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March of the Spoons

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Oaktree b · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A federal judge in San Francisco narrowed who qualifies under his own injunction letting ICE obtain limited Medicaid data from HHS, ruling that people here on valid, nonexpired visas should not have their health information shared. Judge Vince Chhabria rejected the Justice Department's argument that only permanent legal status should shield someone from data sharing, telling attorneys he didn't understand 'the magic of permanently.'

The dispute traces to a July 2025 lawsuit by states challenging an ICE policy memo that reversed a 2019 rule barring immigration enforcement from using healthcare data. Chhabria's December injunction had allowed sharing of basic information, address, phone, birth date, Medicaid ID, for people not lawfully present, but the two sides couldn't agree on who that actually covers. The judge showed more skepticism toward including DACA recipients and TPS holders, and ordered the parties to work out details category by category.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

The government wanted a definition so broad it would have swept in students, workers, and trafficking victims alongside people with a final removal order. A judge had to spell out, slowly, that 'lawfully here' and 'permanently here' are not the same sentence. That took an argument in federal court to settle, which tells you plenty about how the memo was written in the first place.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: March of the Spoons · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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