Written by: Robin Hattersley – Campus Safety News, January 28, 2025

UPDATE JANUARY 29, 2025

President Donald Trump last week revoked a directive implemented in 2011 barring Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol officers from making arrests in “sensitive” areas.

The law firm Husch Blackwell has provided guidance to hospitals on how they should respond to ICE agents coming onto healthcare campuses.

“While it is prudent for healthcare organizations to not be seen as uncooperative with law enforcement, they must be mindful that ICE and other law enforcement must still go through a judicial process to access a patient…”

The firm recommends hospitals take the following steps:

1. Make a plan and practice it: “Healthcare facilities should have policies and practices on interactions with law enforce­ment and there should be a unified approach regardless of whether it is local law enforcement, ICE, or another federal agency.”
2. Limit cooperation without a warrant: The guidance reminds hospitals that staff members are not required to answer questions from ICE agents, hand over their or a patient’s identification, or cooperate without a judicial warrant. They shouldn’t be evasive or belligerent either. If an ICE agent presents a warrant, an authorized person should review it to verify it is valid, signed by a judge or magistrate, identifies the premises that will be searched, describes the time period the warrant is valid, and describes the scope of the search.
3. Maintain patient privacy: Patient information, including their immigration status, should not be disclosed without a judicial warrant. Staff should cover patient documents that are in plain view, as well as computer screens that are in plain view.
4. Create private areas: Hospitals should identify areas that are not open to the public, and access to these private areas should be limited to patients and their family members. ICE agents should not be allowed in these areas unless they have a warrant. ICE is legally allowed to be in a facility’s public areas, including waiting rooms, cafeterias and parking lots without a warrant. However, patients have the right to remain silent, and hospitals can advise them of this right. ICE agents who harass patients or visitors or interfere with their processing can be asked to leave, just like other individuals who are disruptive are asked to leave.
5. Document everything: Staff members should obtain ICE agent names and their badge numbers, as well as ask for their business cards or contact information. Staff members should also observe ICE agents when they have a warrant to ensure they are complying with the warrant. Husch Blackwell recommends the interactions be recorded. Additionally, the incident should be memorialized in writing and should note if the agents broke the law. If staff members are arrested by ICE, you should ask the agents where they are being taken so that their family and attorney can locate them.

The guidance also recommends hospitals reassure patients and stay calm and professional.

UPDATE JANUARY 28, 2025:

Several school district leaders and the Massachusetts attorney general issued guidance on how schools should handle interactions with ICE agents. Here’s what they are telling school staff to do.

UPDATE JANUARY 22, 2025:

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump revoked a directive implemented in 2011 barring Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol officers from making arrests in “sensitive” areas. ICE agents are now authorized to target schools and churches. The announcement didn’t specifically mention hospitals.

ORIGINAL JANUARY 3, 2025 ARTICLE:

President-elect Donald Trump plans to scrap a long-standing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policy preventing the agency from arresting undocumented immigrants in sensitive places like schools, hospitals, and houses of worship, as well as at funerals, weddings and public demonstrations without supervisor approval.

The incoming president plans to rescind the policy as soon as his first day in office, reports NBC News. The move is part of Trump’s plan to carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history.”

The current policy has been in place since 2011 and has been respected to some extent by the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. Although the current policy places restrictions on making arrests in schools, hospitals, and churches, ICE agents can still conduct raids in these locations under special circumstances when there is an imminent threat.

Current Policies Banning ICE Raids of Hospitals and Schools Protect the General Public

The current policy protects public health and benefits the public in general, according to ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt.

“We don’t want people with contagious diseases too scared to go to the hospital or children going uneducated because of poorly considered deportation policies,” he told NBC News.

States that have already cracked down on undocumented immigrations have experienced the negative consequences of these actions.

For example, Javier Hidalgo, legal director of RAICES, a nonprofit group in San Antonio that advocates for refugees and immigrants says Texas’ new law that requires some hospitals to ask patients about their immigration status is already pushing “folks further into the shadows.”

Trump’s rescinding of the current policy will also lead many undocumented immigrants, as well as their families and friends, to avoid engaging with law enforcement.

“This reluctance could severely undermine public safety by deterring crime victims or witnesses from cooperating with investigations out of fear of deportation, resulting in negative effects on public safety that extend far beyond immigrant communities,” according to the Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force.

Additionally, in light of the current labor-shortage, the mass deportation of foreign-born hospital workers could, quite literally, force the collapse of the U.S. healthcare system, reports Forbes.

“It is no exaggeration to say that, without immigrant health care workers, Americans will die for lack of care,” says article author Howard Gleckman.

Schools Will Be Hit Hard by Mass Deportations

The threat of mass deportations could cause chaos in K-12 school districts, reports ChalkBeat.

For example, in 2019, when ICE raided central Mississippi chicken processing plants and arrested nearly 700 undocumented workers, “Teens got frantic texts to leave class and find their younger siblings. Unfamiliar faces whose names weren’t on the pick-up list showed up to take children home. School staff scrambled to make sure no child went home to an empty house, while the owner of a local gym threw together a temporary shelter for kids with nowhere else to go.”

In one district, a quarter of its Latino students, around 150 children, didn’t show up to school the following day.

If Trump carries out his mass deportation plans, similar problems could affect millions of school children across the country. Educators would be responsible for providing food, clothing, counseling, and more to the students whose parents have been arrested.

Texas and Florida are expected to be the first to experience the impact of Trump’s immigration policies due to their governors both supporting the incoming president’s deportation plans.

In response, immigrant rights groups across the nation are conducting know-your-rights trainings and assisting vulnerable families. Additionally, families need to make arrangements — including planning for legal guardianship over their children, financial accounts and properties — should one or both parents who are not documented be picked up by ICE.