Feds launch investigation into Colorado’s healthcare spending on illegal immigrants

By Brandon Richard | Denver7

Denver7 took a closer look at the investigations, which critics call politically-charged and baseless.

DENVER — The Trump administration and now Congress have launched investigations into Colorado’s spending on health care for undocumented immigrants.

Earlier this year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that it was increasing oversight of states that misuse federal Medicaid funds to provide healthcare coverage to undocumented immigrants.

“Medicaid is not, and cannot be, a backdoor pathway to subsidize open borders,” said CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. “States have a duty to uphold the law and protect taxpayer funds. We are putting them on notice — CMS will not allow federal dollars to be diverted to cover those who are not lawfully eligible.”

CMS sent a data request to the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF), which manages the state’s Medicaid program, describing it as “lengthy” and “more detailed” than usual.

“This is entirely unprecedented,” said Bethany Pray, the chief legal and policy officer for the Colorado Center on Law and Policy, an antipoverty law organization. “They’re asking for data, detailed data, specifically on non-citizens.

Advocates and state officials feared the information CMS requested would be turned over to federal immigration authorities. Last month, a federal judge ordered CMS not to share the data with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

With that ruling offering reassurance, HCPF confirmed to Denver7 on Friday that it would send the data to CMS. Marc Williams, the spokesperson for HCPF, sent the following statement:

“HCPF takes the privacy and security of our members’ and applicants’ personal health information very seriously. HCPF is releasing this data only because a federal court ruling in August 2025 prevents CMS from sharing it with immigration enforcement authorities, and CMS has threatened to withhold more than $18 million in federal funding if the State does not comply.  Importantly, the information being provided is not new – it is data the State has already submitted to CMS in other formats, with this request simply requiring it be compiled in a particular way.  HCPF will continue to challenge any inappropriate use of member data and will do everything in its power to safeguard the personal health information of the people we serve.”

This week, the Republican-led U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is the same committee Denver Mayor Mike Johnston testified before in March, announced it’s also investigating Colorado and other Democratic-led states.

The committee’s chairman, U.S. Rep. James Comer, R-Kentucky, sent a letter to Gov. Jared Polis, asking for information, including documents and communications going back to 2019, about the state’s Medicaid program.

“Specifically, the Committee is investigating waste, fraud and abuse in several Medicaid programs due to the Biden Administration’s failure to enforce U.S. immigration laws and the resulting expansion of benefits for illegal aliens,” Comer wrote.

• Read the full letter below

Health care advocates say the committee and the Trump administration’s investigations are baseless.

“There are no federal funds at all going into this program,” said Riley Kitts, the chief policy and research officer for the Colorado Children’s Campaign. “It is not right for the federal government; it is not right for any congressional oversight committee to come in and tell Colorado how to spend Colorado dollars.”

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