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

[cbabe]

https://english.elpais.com/usa/2026-02-23/hospital-staff-want-ice-out-of-hospitals-it-is-a-threat-to-public-health.html

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

(NY to CA)

PATRICIA CARO
Washington - FEB 23, 2026 - 06:33 EST

Workers say federal agents have detained people as they arrived at emergency rooms, entered areas reserved for patients, and prevented nurses from attending to those in need

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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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