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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is on Tuesday launching a new national effort on Tuesday to make states weed out illegal immigrants from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

According to a senior CMS official, CMS will, for the first time, begin sending states monthly enrollment reports that highlight Medicaid and CHIP enrollees that CMS is unable to confirm as citizens or authorized immigrants using federal databases. The CMS official also stated that the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would be among the federal partners contacted to check enrollees’ statuses.

The first report in this initiative was sent out on Tuesday. For the rest of the month, each state will receive its own report before being required to screen the identified cases. State will then report back to CMS the results of the screening process.

“We are strengthening enrollment safeguards to protect taxpayer dollars and ensure these critical programs are reserved for the people who are eligible under the law,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement. “This action builds on our commitment to supporting and maintaining the integrity of the Medicaid and CHIP programs.”

CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz also weighed in on the move, saying, “We have a responsibility to protect the integrity of our nation’s safety-net health programs, and every dollar spent on beneficiaries who are not eligible under the law is a dollar that is diverted from those who need it most and who are lawfully eligible for coverage.”

CMS recently also announced that Medicaid and CHIP states must adopt new screening processes to verify the immigration status of enrollees under President Donald Trump’s second term.

In February, Trump issued an executive order in the first weeks of his second term mandating agencies to examine all federal benefit programs and figure out how to make sure non-citizens aren’t able to receive benefits in a way that violates the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.

A few weeks later, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) took action on its own to expand the list of what the federal government deems to be “public benefits.”

The list was expanded from 31 to 44, so that more government assistance programs will now be subject to verification.

CMS Starts Sending Reports, Judge Orders HHS to Stop Sharing Data with ICE

On Tuesday, CMS announced that the agency’s first batch of reports under the new initiative was sent to each of the states.

CMS and state Medicaid programs will work together during each month to screen the identified cases as illegal immigrants, and then report back to CMS as to whether they are or are not eligible to remain on Medicaid and CHIP.

As CMS on Tuesday started sending monthly enrollment reports to every state for review, a federal judge on Tuesday ordered HHS to stop sharing enrollee information with immigration enforcement.

In January, Trump’s administration began sharing data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a move to assist in deportation efforts. A judge on Tuesday ordered HHS to stop doing so.

At the same time, Republican-led spending legislation approved last month also added new statutory requirements for states to check up on Medicaid enrollees. The bill requires states to conduct eligibility checks on Medicaid enrollees at least twice per year, up from once every two years.

A coalition of Democratic attorneys general, led by New York’s Letitia James, is taking the Trump administration to court over the new CMS rules, as it argues they are also requiring mandatory verification of immigration status for people to be eligible for federally funded programs.

“This proposed rule would weaponize social programs that are supposed to be used to lift people, and by doing so, have a chilling effect on the willingness of individuals to access these programs,” James said last month.

Democratic states, led by James, have filed lawsuits to block the government from terminating people from Medicaid based on immigration status.

“The fight to expand access to Medicaid is central to my work as Attorney General, and as we build the infrastructure of this critical expansion, we must remain vigilant to ensure that the fundamental values of this program are not being compromised,” James added.