{"id":176982,"date":"2025-08-26T12:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T12:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/176982\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T12:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T12:19:10","slug":"ice-visits-startle-ca-hospitals-and-patients-workers-want-new-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/176982\/","title":{"rendered":"ICE visits startle CA hospitals and patients. Workers want new rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ana B. Ibarra<\/a> and Kristen Hwang<\/a>, CalMatters<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by CalMatters<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

Federal immigration agents are more routinely showing up at California medical facilities as the Trump administration ramps up deportations.<\/p>\n

They may come to the emergency room, bringing in someone who\u2019s suffering a medical crisis while being detained. They may wait in the lobby, as agents did for two weeks at an L.A.-area hospital <\/a>waiting for a woman to be discharged. Or they may even chase people inside, as federal agents did at a Southern California surgical center.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The sight of these agents \u2014 often armed and with covered faces \u2014 makes many wary and may keep people from seeking care.<\/p>\n

Existing hospital policies guide operations when law enforcement brings in a person under arrest, hospital officials say.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is nothing new to hospitals,\u201d said Lois Richardson, vice president and counsel at the California Hospital Association. \u201cWe get inmates, detainees, arrestees all the time, whether it’s police, sheriff, highway patrol, ICE, whatever it is.\u201d The job for hospital workers remains to provide care, she added, and not to get involved in disputes over why a person is in custody.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet immigration attorneys, advocates and health workers have expressed concerns over the handling of some of these cases, both by immigration officers and by some administrators at medical facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Specifically, they\u2019re <\/a>worried about the application of protocols like visitation rules, about threats to patients\u2019 legal and privacy rights, and about risks to hospital workers themselves.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a level of privacy that we owe to patients and their families, and that has just been completely demolished with all of the involvement of ICE coming into hospitals,\u201d said Kate Mobeen, an ICU nurse at John Muir Medical Center in Concord. \u201cIt creates just a huge sense of fear, not only in our patient population, but in our employee population and our nurses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patients’ rights, policies face new tests<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes when ICE has shown up at medical facilities with a detained patient, the result has been conflicting messaging about the rules.<\/p>\n

On July 29, ICE agents took a man to John Muir Medical Center in Concord because he suffered an unspecified medical emergency while being detained outside the Concord immigration court, according to Ali Saidi, an attorney and the director of Stand Together Contra Costa, a local rapid response and legal services organization.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Saidi arrived at the hospital as part of the response network, he said hospital staff told him that he was not allowed to see the detained patient, but that the man\u2019s family would be allowed. Then, when the man\u2019s wife arrived, \u201cThe rules had somehow changed, and they said no family visit,\u201d Saidi said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a statement shared by the Contra Costa Immigrants Rights Alliance, the detained man\u2019s wife, who asked to be identified only by her middle name, Maria, said that when she later talked to her husband, he told her that he was so terrified that he passed out.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy family and I went to the emergency room and we asked to see him and talk to him to make sure he was okay,\u201d Maria said, in the statement. \u201cThe hospital staff would not let us see him and they would not give us any information about what was happening to him. They wouldn\u2019t even answer my questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Muir officials would not comment on the incident, citing privacy laws. But in an email, Ben Drew, a spokesperson for the hospital, said general policy is that \u201cIf a law enforcement agency indicates that visitation presents a safety or security concern, [the hospital] may limit or deny visitation to protect our patients, staff, and visitors.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Saidi said that when the wife insisted on getting information about the man\u2019s condition, hospital security called the police.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe understand that emotions are high whenever a family member or friend is in the emergency department or hospital,\u201d said Drew. \u201cThe hospital only involves local police in circumstances when a patient or visitor\u2019s behavior becomes abusive, disruptive, or threatening, and cannot be resolved through our own security team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saidi denied that the family was being disruptive, saying that conversations with hospital staff and administration were respectful and no voices were raised.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe atmosphere in that emergency bay was something like I\u2019ve never seen before in my career,\u201d Saidi said. \u201cThere was a chilling effect. Everyone was averting their eyes. You could tell the staff felt bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Multiple emergency department nurses told Mobeen, a local California Nurses Association leader at John Muir, that ICE officers were \u201cvery aggressive with staff\u201d and staff were afterwards \u201cemotionally and physically upset\u201d by what happened, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s horrifying to not be able to tell patients\u2019 family members how they are, what their status is,\u201d Mobeen said.<\/p>\n

Part of the issue, Mobeen added, is training. Staff were not given adequate training on how to respond to any kind of immigration enforcement action that may occur at the hospital, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Drew, the spokesman for John Muir, countered that the hospital has given guidance on its longstanding law enforcement policy and answered multiple questions since January about what to do if ICE agents show up at their facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Limits for ICE access, sometimes murky<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last month, immigration agents occupied the lobby of Dignity Health\u2019s Glendale Memorial Hospital, even standing behind reception desks, as photos that circulated online showed.<\/a> Protestors gathered outside the hospital hosting rallies and press conferences.<\/p>\n

They were all there because agents had previously brought in Milagro Solis-Portillo<\/a>, an immigrant from El Salvador, for medical care following her detention. They spent 15 days in the hospital waiting for Solis-Portillo\u2019s discharge before transferring her to another hospital and then taking her into custody, according to local news reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a statement<\/a>, officials from Dignity Memorial Hospital said they could not legally prohibit law enforcement from being in public areas.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s true, say legal experts: Waiting rooms and lobbies are considered public spaces in hospitals. But agents cannot move through hospitals without limits. Law enforcement officials are not allowed to search for people in exam rooms or other private spaces without a federal court warrant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When agents bring in someone who is in their custody and needs medical care, the application of the law can be more murky.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to Richardson at the hospital association, how far an agent can go into treatment areas with a detained patient may be decided on a case by case basis. In cases where a detained patient is struggling or resisting, that patient may need guarding, she explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And if law enforcement officers do go inside exam rooms, they may hear medical information while on guard. But that isn’t necessarily a privacy violation, according to federal rules. The HIPPA Privacy Rule, the law that sets privacy standards for medical information, has a provision<\/a> that allows for \u201cincidental disclosures\u201d of information as long as \u201creasonable safeguards\u201d are applied.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hospital will, and the doctor will make reasonable attempts to protect the patient’s privacy.\u201d \u201cWhat is reasonable is going to depend, again, on what’s wrong with the patient, how the patient is behaving, the nature of the circumstances,\u201d Richardson said.<\/p>\n

HIPAA protects the disclosure of medical records, which include names, addresses and social security numbers along with health conditions. State law also requires health facilities to protect this information. According to guidance from the attorney general\u2019s office<\/a>, health facilities should consider a patient\u2019s immigration status confidential.<\/p>\n

At the same time, some disclosures are required if law enforcement can prove lawful custody or show an appropriate warrant. A federal court warrant signed by a judge grants law enforcement immediate access to information or to search a particular area, while an ICE administrative warrant does not require immediate compliance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Health workers in ‘precarious’ situations\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Health facilities generally direct frontline workers not to engage with immigration agents, but rather to immediately contact security or management.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One particular incident at a Southern California surgery center stands out, in conversation with health workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On July 8, federal agents targeted three landscapers who had parked outside of the Ontario Advanced Surgical Center. They chased one of the men inside on foot, according to a felony criminal complaint filed against two health care workers in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.<\/p>\n

In videos of the incident posted online, a masked agent wearing a vest labeled \u201cPOLICE ICE\u201d <\/a>on the back holds a weeping man by the shoulder inside the center while several workers in scrubs stand by. At multiple points in the video workers ask the officer for identification; one worker says, \u201cthis is a private business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two workers, Danielle Davila and Jose Ortega, tell the officer to leave. Davila moves between the officer and the man, saying \u201cGet your hands off of him. You don\u2019t even have a warrant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ortega puts an arm between Davila and the officer and says \u201cYou have no proper identification.\u201d<\/p>\n

The officer says to both workers \u201cYou touched a federal agent.\u201d Then Davila responds, \u201cI\u2019m not touching you.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Davila and Ortega were later charged with two felony counts of assaulting a federal officer and conspiring to prevent a federal officer from performing their duties.<\/p>\n

Last week the felony charges were dismissed and both Davila and Ortega pleaded not guilty to a subsequent misdemeanor assault charge. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney\u2019s office declined to comment on the charges.<\/p>\n

Davila\u2019s defense attorney Oliver Cleary said his client believed she was doing the right thing by asking for credentials and a warrant.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t just come in where people are getting medical care and whisk them away,\u201d Cleary said. \u201cShe didn\u2019t know who these people were. They didn\u2019t tell her who they were, and as far as she knew this was a patient of the clinic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carlos Ju\u00e1rez, Ortega\u2019s defense attorney, said arresting and charging health workers with crimes for asking to see a warrant and identification puts them in a \u201cprecarious\u201d and \u201cdangerous situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey did what they needed to do and what they had a right to do,\u201d Ju\u00e1rez said. \u201cWhat I hope is it doesn\u2019t have a chilling effect on other health care workers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Workers say additional training can help<\/strong><\/p>\n

Around the state, health workers say they\u2019d like to see management provide additional guidance on how to respond to such scenarios if they were to play out in their workplace. Some workers are providing training themselves.<\/p>\n

Adriana Rugeles-Ortiz, a licensed vocational nurse at Kaiser Permanente Modesto Medical Center, has been leading \u201cKnow Your Rights\u201d sessions at her hospital and in her community as part of her union, SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West. She said some of her coworkers have expressed anxiety over some of the situations they\u2019ve seen play out in other hospitals.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of my involvement with all the training that we have done to the workers and to the community, personally, I do feel prepared. I am not that confident that we have been able to reach the entire workforce within Kaiser to get them to the level of confidence to deal with it,\u201d Rugeles-Ortiz said.<\/p>\n

Dr. Douglas Yoshida, an emergency room physician at Stanford Health Tri-Valley in Alameda County, said additional guidance and training for workers at medical facilities could be of great value.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think as health care providers, we need to deliver good health care to these patients, just like any other patient, and we need to protect their rights,\u201d Yoshida said. \u201cI mean, personally, if someone comes in in ICE custody, within the limits of the law, I want to do everything I can to help [patients.]\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The hospital in Pleasanton that Yoshida works in is located near the county\u2019s Santa Rita Jail; staff, he said, have been used to a law enforcement presence. But the recent incident at John Muir Medical Center, about 30 miles north, as well as the criminal charges filed against the southern California surgery center workers have set people on edge, Yoshida said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNormally, health care workers have no reason to fear law enforcement,\u201d he added, \u201cbut we\u2019re in uncharted territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org<\/a> to learn more.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ana B. Ibarra and Kristen Hwang, CalMatters This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":176983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[210,1141,1142,3584,409,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-176982","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-hospitals","12":"tag-immigration","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115095035345870152","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}