A Fear Pandemic Grips Safety Net Hospitals and Their Patients [View all]

[justaprogressive]

Workers at the St. John’s Community Health clinic said they couldn’t help but notice the woman’s absence. According to them, she’d been a regular presence at the diabetes exercise and food classes offered by the clinic in South Los Angeles County, and she often would then stay for a regular appointment with her doctor. When she simply stopped coming recently, the staff began to worry.

After they contacted her at home, the woman agreed to let a doctor visit her there. “Her blood sugar level was through the roof,” said St. John’s president and CEO Jim Mangia. “She’d been doing really well, so we asked what had happened.”

Answer: The woman, fearful of authorities who were rounding up undocumented residents, hadn’t left her house in five days—not even for a trip to the grocery store, let alone the health clinic. Instead, she told the visiting doctor, she had subsisted strictly on the two things she had on hand—tortillas and coffee.

“This is what happens when people stop receiving the care they need,” Mangia said. “They’re going to get sicker.” A fear of going to the market only compounds the problem.


The last two weeks have pushed California health clinics and hospitals into full scramble mode. Already buffeted by an uncertain financial future, facing proposed massive federal and state funding reductions, the care providers are seeing a new issue: Many of their patients have stopped showing up for appointments, afraid that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or other federal authorities may be lurking nearby.

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-06-27-immigration-ice-health-care-hospitals/