Claudia Boyd-Barrett and Oona Zenda
Illustration by Oona Zenda
Lydia Romero strained to listen to her husband’s feeble voice by means of the cellphone.
Per week earlier, immigration brokers had grabbed Julio César Peña from his entrance yard in Glendale, California. Now, he was in a hospital after struggling a ministroke. He was shackled to the mattress by his hand and foot, he informed Romero, and brokers have been within the room, listening to the decision. He was scared he would die and wished his spouse there.
“What hospital are you at?” Romero requested.
“I can’t tell you,” he replied.
Viridiana Chabolla, Peña’s lawyer, couldn’t get a solution to that query, both. Peña’s deportation officer and the medical contractor on the Adelanto ICE Processing Center refused to inform her. Exasperated, she tried calling a close-by hospital, Providence St. Mary Medical Center.
“They said even if they had a person in ICE custody under their care, they wouldn’t be able to confirm whether he’s there or not, that only ICE can give me the information,” Chabolla stated. The hospital confirmed this coverage to KFF Health News.
Family members and attorneys for sufferers hospitalized after being detained by federal immigration officers stated they’re going through excessive problem attempting to find sufferers, get details about their well-being, and supply them emotional and authorized assist. They say many hospitals refuse to supply data or permit contact with these sufferers. Instead, hospitals permit immigration officers to name the photographs on how a lot — if any — contact is allowed, which might deprive sufferers of their constitutional proper to hunt authorized recommendation and go away them susceptible to abuse, attorneys stated.
Hospitals say they’re attempting to guard the security and privateness of sufferers, workers, and regulation enforcement officers, even whereas hospital workers in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Portland, Ore., cities the place Immigration and Customs Enforcement has performed immigration raids, say it’s made their jobs troublesome. Hospitals have used what are generally referred to as blackout procedures, which might embrace registering a affected person below a pseudonym, eradicating their identify from the hospital listing, or prohibiting workers from even confirming {that a} affected person is within the hospital.
“We’ve heard incidences of this blackout process being used at multiple hospitals across the state, and it’s very concerning,” stated Shiu-Ming Cheer, the deputy director of immigrant and racial justice on the California Immigrant Policy Center, an advocacy group.
Some Democratic-led states, including California, Colorado, and Maryland, have enacted laws that seeks to guard sufferers from immigration enforcement in hospitals. However, these insurance policies don’t tackle protections for folks already in ICE custody.
More Detainees Hospitalized
Peña is amongst more than 350,000 people arrested by federal immigration authorities since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. As arrests and detentions have climbed, so too have stories of individuals taken to hospitals by immigration brokers due to sickness or harm — as a result of preexisting circumstances or issues stemming from their arrest or detention.
ICE has faced criticism for utilizing aggressive and deadly ways, in addition to for reports of mistreatment and inadequate medical care at its amenities. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) informed reporters at a Jan. 20 information convention outdoors a detention heart he visited in California City that he spoke to a diabetic lady held there who had not acquired therapy in two months.
While there aren’t any publicly obtainable statistics on the variety of folks sick or injured in ICE detention, the company’s information releases level to 32 people who died in immigration custody in 2025. Six extra have died this yr.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, didn’t reply to a request for details about its insurance policies or Peña’s case.
According to ICE’s guidelines, folks in custody needs to be given entry to a phone, visits from household and pals, and personal session with authorized counsel. The company could make administrative selections, together with about visitation, when a affected person is within the hospital, however ought to defer to hospital insurance policies on contacting subsequent of kin when a affected person is critically ailing, the rules state.
Asked intimately about hospital practices associated to sufferers in immigration custody and whether or not there are greatest practices that hospitals ought to observe, Ben Teicher, a spokesperson for the American Hospital Association, declined to remark.
David Simon, a spokesperson for the California Hospital Association, stated that “there are times when hospitals will — at the request of law enforcement — maintain confidentiality of patients’ names and other identifying characteristics.”
Although insurance policies differ, members of the general public can usually name a hospital and ask for a affected person by identify to search out out whether or not they’re there, and infrequently be transferred to the affected person’s room, stated William Weber, an emergency doctor in Minneapolis and medical director for the Medical Justice Alliance, which advocates for the medical wants of individuals in regulation enforcement custody. Family members and others approved by the affected person can go to. And medical workers routinely name kin to allow them to know a beloved one is within the hospital, or to ask for data that might assist with their care.
But when a affected person is in regulation enforcement custody, hospitals steadily agree to limit this type of data sharing and entry, Weber stated. The rationale is that these measures forestall unauthorized outsiders from threatening the affected person or regulation enforcement personnel, on condition that hospitals lack the safety infrastructure of a jail or detention heart. High-profile sufferers similar to celebrities generally additionally request the sort of safety.
Several attorneys and well being care suppliers questioned the necessity for such restrictions. Immigration detention is civil, not felony, detention. The Trump administration says it’s targeted on arresting and deporting criminals, but most of these arrested don’t have any felony conviction, in keeping with information compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse and several other information shops.
Taken Outside His Home
According to Peña’s spouse, Romero, he has no felony report. Peña got here to the United States from Mexico in sixth grade and has an grownup son within the U.S. navy. The 43-year-old has terminal kidney illness and survived a coronary heart assault in November. He has hassle strolling and is partially blind, his spouse stated. He was detained Dec. 8 whereas resting outdoors after coming residence from dialysis therapy.
Initially, Romero was capable of finding her husband by means of the ICE Online Detainee Locator System. She visited him at a short lived holding facility in downtown Los Angeles, bringing him his medicines and a sweater. She then noticed he’d been moved to the Adelanto detention heart. But the locator didn’t present the place he was after he was hospitalized.
When she and different kin drove to the detention facility to search out him, they have been turned away, she stated. Romero acquired occasional calls from her husband within the hospital however stated they have been lower than 10 minutes lengthy and passed off below ICE surveillance. She wished to know the place he was so she might be on the hospital to carry his hand, ensure he was effectively cared for, and encourage him to remain robust, she stated.
Shackling him and stopping him from seeing his household was unfair and pointless, she stated.
“He’s weak,” Romero stated. “It’s not like he’s going to run away.”
ICE guidelines say contact and visits from household and pals needs to be allowed “within security and operational constraints.” Detainees have a constitutional right to talk confidentially with an lawyer. Weber said immigration authorities should tell attorneys where their clients are and allow them to talk in person or use an unmonitored phone line.
Hospitals, though, fall into a gray area on enforcing these rights, since they are primarily focused on treating medical needs, Weber said. Still, he added, hospitals should ensure their policies align with the law.
Family Denied Access
Numerous immigration attorneys have spent weeks trying to locate clients detained by ICE, with their efforts sometimes thwarted by hospitals.
Nicolas Thompson-Lleras, a Los Angeles attorney who counsels immigrants facing deportation, said two of his clients were registered under aliases at different hospitals in Los Angeles County last year. Initially, the hospitals denied the clients were there and refused to let Thompson-Lleras meet with them, he said. Family members were also denied access, he said.
One of his clients was Bayron Rovidio Marin, a automobile wash employee injured throughout a raid in August. Immigration brokers surveilled him for over a month at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, a county-run facility, with out charging him.
In November, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to curb the use of blackout insurance policies for sufferers below civil immigration custody at county-run hospitals. In an announcement, Arun Patel, the chief affected person security and scientific danger administration officer for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, stated the insurance policies are designed to scale back security dangers for sufferers, medical doctors, nurses, and custody officers.
“In some situations, there may be concerns about threats to the patient, attempts to interfere with medical care, unauthorized visitors, or the introduction of contraband,” Patel stated. “Our goal is not to restrict care but to allow care to happen safely and without disruption.”
Leaving Patients Vulnerable
Thompson-Lleras stated he’s involved that hospitals are cooperating with federal immigration authorities on the expense of sufferers and their households and leaving sufferers susceptible to abuse.
“It allows people to be treated suboptimally,” Thompson-Lleras stated. “It allows people to be treated on abbreviated timelines, without supervision, without family intervention or advocacy. These people are alone, disoriented, being interrogated, at least in Bayron’s case, under pain and influence of medication.”
Such incidents are alarming to hospital employees. In Los Angeles, two well being care professionals who requested to not be recognized by KFF Health News, out of concern for his or her livelihoods, stated that ICE and hospital directors, at private and non-private hospitals, steadily block workers from contacting relations for folks in custody, even to search out out about their well being circumstances or what drugs they’re on. That violates medical ethics, they stated.
Blackout procedures are one other concern.
“They help facilitate, whether intentionally or not, the disappearance of patients,” stated one employee, a doctor for the county’s Department of Health Services and a part of a coalition of involved well being employees from throughout the area.
At Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland, nurses publicly expressed outrage over what they noticed as hospital cooperation with ICE and the flouting of affected person rights. Legacy Health has sent a cease and desist letter to the nurses’ union, accusing it of constructing “false or misleading statements.”
“I was really disgusted,” stated Blaire Glennon, a nurse who give up her job on the hospital in December. She stated quite a few sufferers have been delivered to the hospital by ICE with critical accidents they sustained whereas being detained. “I felt like Legacy was doing massive human rights violations.”
Handcuffed While Unconscious
Two days earlier than Christmas, Chabolla, Peña’s lawyer, acquired a name from ICE with the reply she and Romero had been ready for. Peña was at Victor Valley Global Medical Center, about 10 miles from Adelanto, and about to be launched.
Excited, Romero and her household made the two-hour-plus drive from Glendale to the hospital to take him residence.
When they acquired there, they discovered Peña intubated and unconscious, his arm and leg nonetheless handcuffed to the hospital mattress. He’d had a extreme seizure on Dec. 20, however nobody had informed his household or authorized group, his lawyer stated.
Tim Lineberger, a spokesperson for Victor Valley Global Medical Center’s mother or father firm, KPC Health, stated he couldn’t touch upon particular affected person circumstances, due to privateness protections. He stated the hospital’s insurance policies on affected person data disclosure adjust to state and federal regulation.
Peña was lastly cleared to go residence on Jan. 5. No court docket date has been set, and his household is submitting a petition to regulate his authorized standing primarily based on his son’s navy service. For now, he nonetheless faces deportation proceedings.
