LA doctors, community join forces to rally against ICE, law enforcement interference in patient care

Los Angeles, CA – On Sunday, March 15, the People’s Care Collective (PCC), hosted an event on the steps of LA General Medical Center calling attention to the many violations of health and human rights that Los Angeles hospitals have enabled. ICE and local law enforcement have entered health care facilities trampling on the rights of immigrants and their families.

Members of Centro CSO, Union del Barrio, Justice LA Coalition, California Immigrant Policy Center, and People’s Care Collective all spoke truth at the steps of power to demand that LA hospitals must stop prioritizing the interests of police, ICE, and insurance companies over protecting patients who seek care, regardless of their immigration status.

In October of 2025, whistleblowers exposed that that ICE agents were allegedly terrorizing detainee patients at White Memorial, a Boyle Heights Adventist hospital, by violating their right to privacy and HIPAA laws, denying them the ability to make their own medical care decisions, and interfering with hospital staff who tried to connect detainees with their families.

In response, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors directed the director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (DHS) in consultation with the county counsel to develop and implement consistent guidelines governing “blackout” and law enforcement contact policies with clear provisions regarding their applicability to patients detained by federal immigration authorities.

Unfortunately, that policy was developed without any input from frontline health workers or community members and remains “under review” despite DHS’s goal of full implementation by the end of February 2026.

PCC and supporting organizations are demanding LA County hospital administrators adopt the Model Policy for Immigration Enforcement in the Healthcare Settings developed by the Physician Working Group on Patient Safety in collaboration with the ACLU of Southern California, California Immigrant Policy Center (CIPC), Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), Immigrant Defenders Law Center, and SEIU UHW, which enshrines patients’ legal rights to privacy, to legal counsel, and to family visitation.

“We are here today because all of these systems – immigration detention, mass incarceration, and genocide – are part of the same machinery that treats certain lives as disposable. And too often, the medical industrial complex is complicit in that harm, “ said M, a Los Angeles medical student and organizer with the People’s Care Collective. “Hospitals should be places of care and healing, but until our institutions refuse to collaborate with the systems that cage and kill people, they remain part of the same structure of violence we are here to break down today. We say that enough is enough.”

“Protect your patients. Stand with the community you serve. Healthcare should never be at the risk of detention, isolation or deportation,” said Centro CSO’s Verita Topete, “Today we also seek justice for Ruben Ray Martinez, who was killed by ICE in Texas on March 15, 2024. His life mattered and his family deserves answers. His death is part of a larger crisis. This year alone, eleven people have died in ICE. custody. Eleven people that should still be with their families and communities.”

By shedding light on the injustice and crimes committed by ICE and local law enforcement inside the halls of healing spaces, PCC and supporting organizations are helping to further unite the community against the harm being done to it at the hands of government.

#LosAngelesCA #CA #ImmigrantRights #CentroCSO #ICE