In Minnesota, 'Places of Healing Are Under Siege'

There was the pregnant woman who missed her checkup, afraid to visit a clinic during the feds' sweeping Minnesota immigration crackdown; a nurse found her at home, in labor and just about to give birth. There was also the diabetic afraid to pick up insulin, the patient with a treatable wound that festered and required a trip to the ICU, and hospital staffers—from Latin America, Somalia, Myanmar, and elsewhere—too scared to come to work. "Our places of healing are under siege," Dr. Roli Dwivedi, ex-president of the Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians, said Tuesday at a presser in St. Paul, where doctor after doctor told of patients suffering amid the clampdown, per the AP.

Since 2011, hospitals, schools, and churches had been off-limits for immigration enforcement. But last year, the Trump administration announced federal immigration agencies could now enter those facilities. "I have been a practicing physician for more than 19 years here in Minnesota, and I have never seen this level of chaos and fear," including at the height of the pandemic, Dwivedi said. At Minneapolis' downtown Hennepin County Medical Center, doctors and nurses have moved communications about the crackdown to an encrypted group chat, where they have described run-ins with ICE officials, including a recent incident when an officer was accused of unnecessarily shackling a patient.

The medical center has the busiest emergency room in the state and is an important safety net for patients who are uninsured, including people in the US illegally. "I can't believe we're having to resort to this," said one nurse. Plainclothes ICE officers have become a fixture around the hospital, the nurse added, focusing on people of color and asking both patients and workers for paperwork as they leave. "How is this all happening?" the nurse asked. DHS rep Tricia McLaughlin denies that federal officers are interfering with medical care, claiming ICE "does not conduct enforcement at hospitals—period. We would only go into a hospital if there were an active danger to public safety" or to escort detainees.

Home birth requests have also spiked, "even among patients who have never previously considered this, or for whom it is not a safe option," said Dr. Erin Stevens of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The chaos isn't limited to Minnesota. Crackdowns are happening in many states—especially Democratic-led ones—to varying degrees. Immigrants are "absolutely" avoiding medical care due to fear of being targeted, said Sandy Reding, president of the California Nurses Association, noting some hospitals in the state have seen declining numbers of patients. More here.