THE PROBLEM WITH ICEHealth Care Workers Want ICE Out of Hospitals, and Blue States Are Responding
As the Trump administration intensifies its immigration crackdown, health care workers in multiple states say ICE is increasing its presence in health care facilities, deterring people from seeking medical care and creating chaos that jeopardizes the safety of their patients.
Last month, the parents of a 7-year-old girl whose nose wouldn’t stop bleeding took her to Portland Adventist Health in Portland, Oregon, for urgent care. Before the family could get through the doors, federal immigration agents reportedly detained them in the parking lot and took them to a detention center in Texas.
At Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, workers say U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers hang around the campus, asking patients and employees for proof of citizenship. Last month, tensions came to a head when ICE agents used handcuffs to shackle a 31-year-old Mexican immigrant to his hospital bed. ICE claimed the man, who had broken bones in his face and a fractured skull, had run headfirst into a wall on purpose while handcuffed and trying to flee.
And last summer, ICE agents chased an immigrant into the Ontario Advanced Surgery Center in Ontario, California, precipitating a confrontation with two surgery center workers wearing scrubs. The two workers were later indicted by a federal grand jury, charged with assaulting and interfering with federal immigration officers.
As the Trump administration intensifies its immigration crackdown, health care workers in multiple states say ICE is increasing its presence in health care facilities, deterring people from seeking medical care and creating chaos that jeopardizes the safety of their patients.
Even before Trump took office last year, Republican-led states such as Florida and Texas began mixing health care and immigration enforcement by requiring hospitals to ask patients about their immigration status. Now that ICE has extended its enforcement activities to hospitals and health care facilities — areas that were largely off-limits during the Biden administration — an increasing number of Democratic-led states are pushing back.
Last month, Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Maura Healey filed legislation “to keep ICE out of courthouses, schools, child care programs, hospitals and churches,” and signed an executive order to limit ICE actions on state-owned property.
In December, Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker signed a measure that bars health care providers from sharing sensitive health information with federal immigration agents and requires hospitals to develop policies around how they will interact with agents.
And in September, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation that makes immigration status and place of birth protected health information, and prohibits agents from entering nonpublic, patient-sensitive areas of health care facilities without a warrant signed by a judge.
