Hospital staff want ICE out of hospitals: ‘It is a threat to public health’

In the 44 years that Dianne Sposito has worked as a nurse, she had never before had to confront authorities in order to do her job. That changed last December, when agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prevented her from attending to a patient who arrived at the emergency room of UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center in Los Angeles, where she works. The patient, a migrant woman, was screaming from the gurney on which paramedics had brought her in, and Sposito rushed to help — only to be stopped by two ICE agents who blocked her path.

In the first year of Donald Trump’s second term, the presence of immigration agents has proliferated around, in the parking lots of, and even inside hospitals — territory that had been considered off‑limits for three decades. Early in his return to the White House, Trump eliminated the ban that had kept immigration agents away from so‑called “sensitive locations,” which included hospitals, schools, and places of worship. The largest deportation effort in U.S. History, the Republican’s top priority, required that no space be left untouched.

In hospitals, staff complain that the presence of federal officials discourages patients from going to the emergency room when they need to, obstructs their work, and leaves workers powerless against abuses by the agents.

“I thought they were paramedics because it was completely dark, but when they turned around I saw the masks they were wearing and the goggles, and I knew they were from ICE, even though they weren’t carrying identification,” Sposito recalls. “They were armed. I asked them who they were, and they replied, ‘You don’t need to know.’ Then I asked them if they had a warrant, and they said they didn’t need one. I wanted to take the woman’s vital signs, and they told me, ‘Take your hands off her,’” the nurse says.

Sposito ended up calling her superiors and the hospital administrator. The agents escorted the patient they were guarding all the way into her room. The incident left the medical staff shaken and confused about the possibility of it happening again. “After working in the ER all these years, I’ve dealt with police officers many times. They ask their questions, but they’re very polite. These guys were very rude,” she says.

“One of our demands to hospital administrators is that they should put a plan in place so that when ICE agents come, we know how to protect patients’ rights,” says Sandra, a nurse at Memorial Hospital in Salinas, California, who prefers not to give her full name. Sandra and Sposito are affiliated with the National Nurses Union (NNU), the nation’s largest nurses’ union, which has mobilized against ICE’s presence in hospitals on several occasions. Their most recent protest was on February 19. The NNU is calling on Congress to defund ICE and the Border Patrol, arguing that the federal immigration enforcement agencies have become one of the “country’s top public health threats.”

Sandra, who has worked as a nurse for 25 years and is assigned to the intensive care unit, recounts several cases she has heard from colleagues in which patients were put at risk. In one case, the patient needed urgent care, but agents would not allow staff to contact the family. “It is very important that the family is involved in the patient’s treatment because the doctors and nurses need to know the medical history to decide on the treatment,” she says. In another case, a patient with high blood pressure avoided going to the ER for fear of encountering ICE, and by the time he finally went, his condition was critical.

Sensitive locations in need of protection

“Healthcare facilities serving neighborhoods with a high concentration of immigrants are navigating canceled appointments and empty waiting rooms as patients are scared to continue with planned treatments or to seek life-saving medical care,” states the lawsuit PCUN v. Noem, filed in Oregon by several organizations against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and defended by the Justice Action Center (JAC).

The suit seeks to restore the 30‑year‑old policy that shielded sensitive locations from immigration operations. Beyond hospitals, the consequences have been devastating in schools, where absenteeism has surged as students try to avoid encounters with ICE.

On February 12, the plaintiffs filed an emergency motion requesting interim relief while the court reaches a final decision on the lawsuit, which was originally filed in April and joined in September by the country’s largest teachers’ unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. Four other lawsuits have been filed across the United States challenging the rollback of sensitive‑location protections, but PCUN v. Noem represents the broadest coalition of plaintiffs, including educators and school staff, health‑care workers, unions, community groups, and religious organizations.

“The level of immigration enforcement across the country has increased dramatically in recent months,” explains Brandon Galli-Graves, one of the JAC attorneys handling the case. “This has increasingly impacted our plaintiffs and the people they represent. That’s why we wanted to file an emergency motion to inform the court and the judge about these instances of increased immigration enforcement and to obtain assistance for these individuals.”

Federal agents are authorized to enter common areas of hospitals, such as lobbies, waiting rooms, and any other area open to the public. They are not allowed in non-public areas, such as treatment rooms, consulting rooms, and patient rooms, unless they have a warrant. However, healthcare staff report that the agents have violated hospital protocol, refused to provide documentation, and, in some cases, had altercations with doctors and nurses. Even if they do not enter private areas, the mere presence of armed agents in hospital corridors has psychological consequences for patients, their families, and hospital staff.

Several of these incidents are documented in the JAC lawsuit, which includes testimony from around 60 people describing the harm caused by the loss of sensitive‑location protections. In January, the parents of a seven‑year‑old girl whose nose would not stop bleeding took her to Portland Adventist Health in Oregon for urgent care. Before the family could reach the door, federal immigration agents stopped them in the parking lot and transported them to a detention center in Texas.

In addition to the arrest of patients, medical staff describe disruptions to treatment, such as discontinuing the practice of taking patients outside for fresh air or exercise.

Health‑care workers also face the dilemma of either handing over the information immigration agents demand or complying with HIPAA, the law that protects patient privacy. Hospitals are not supposed to ask about a patient’s immigration status or share personal data with agents, but states like Texas and Florida have passed laws requiring such information to be reported to authorities. “The demands from immigration agents, requiring them to be allowed entry or to find patients, create a kind of vicious cycle where they often don’t really know what to do,” says Galli-Graves.

ICE did not respond to this newspaper’s request for comment on its presence in hospitals.

Faced with this situation, NNU plans to continue protesting. Sandra admits she feels some fear about what could happen to her for participating, but she has no intention of stopping. “It’s risky because ICE doesn’t just investigate undocumented people — they also go after people who help them. But this is not the time to stay silent, because what ICE is doing is inhumane. This is how the Nazis started: ordinary people in Germany said, ‘It doesn’t affect me,’ and they didn’t speak up until things got worse. I have to do my part and not stay silent,” she says.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition