JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Early last year, the Trump administration reversed a policy that kept immigration enforcement from happening in or near sensitive areas - places like hospitals, schools and churches. Now agents are arresting people near those areas, and medical professionals say people are staying away even when they're sick. Alex Olgin reports.
ALEX OLGIN, BYLINE: Last month, in Portland, Oregon, Darianny Liseth Gonzalez De Crespo and Yohendry De Jesus Crespo were taking their 7-year-old, Diana Crespo, into urgent care. She had a nosebleed that wouldn't stop. Their friend Ana Linares heard the story from the family by phone. She says they had just parked in the lot of the Adventist Health care center early in the morning on Friday, January 16, when they were surrounded by three trucks.
ANA LINARES: (Speaking Spanish).
OLGIN: Linares says men wearing ICE labels on their clothes got out of the trucks and arrested Yohendry, the father. According to the family's lawyer, Natalie Lerner, the family fled Venezuela in 2024 and are seeking asylum in the United States following all the appropriate steps. Linares says when the mom, Darianny, tried to film the interaction, the officials arrested all three of them. The parents pleaded with the agents to let Darianny take her daughter to get care.
LINARES: (Speaking Spanish).
OLGIN: But Linares says instead of taking her inside the health care center, the agents took the family to Dilley Detention Center, south of San Antonio, Texas. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has not responded to any questions about the family or their detention. Adventist Health said it has no information about the family's detention and is not coordinating with any agency. These aren't the first immigration actions that have been taken outside this facility in Portland. Earlier in January, Customs and Border Patrol agents made an immigration stop in a parking lot outside. Their target, a Venezuelan without legal status, was there for a medical appointment, according to court documents. This has happened in other states, too. During the recent Minnesota ICE raids...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ROLI DWIVEDI: In our clinic parking lot, a mother and a son were forcefully separated from, while trying to fill a prescription for a seizure medication.
OLGIN: That's physician Dr. Roli Dwivedi (ph) who says the mother was detained. She spoke at a press conference in January about how scared people were to seek medical care.
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DWIVEDI: A pregnant mother missed her checkup and stopped answering her phone. A nurse went to her home and found her eight centimeter dilated, laboring alone and terrified to seek help.
OLGIN: DHS did not respond to a request for comment about the effect of conducting immigration enforcement in sensitive areas. But last year when they changed their policy, they said the action, quote, "empowers the brave men and women in CPB and ICE to enforce our immigration laws and catch criminal aliens." Anna Cabot, immigration clinic director at the University of Houston, says the policy change reverses more than 30 years of precedent.
ANNA CABOT: It's always been a policy of the Department of Homeland Security to be like, look, we're not going to do this because we regard these places - being in these places as kind of fundamental to human existence and important.
OLGIN: Cabot says under the Trump administration's revised policy, immigration agents can arrest people in public areas, like parking lots and waiting rooms, but they still can't in private areas like exam rooms. She says hospitals and clinics could close and lock doors to waiting rooms, but that's about it.
CABOT: There's very little that hospitals can do other than, you know, making sure the barriers are clear, stopping ICE from entering when they don't have judicial warrants.
LINARES: NPR reached out to the American Hospital Association, but they didn't provide a comment. However, some places are taking additional steps. Last year, St. John's Community Health in the Los Angeles area upped security and made plans to move people from waiting rooms into exam rooms if agents showed up. Then during the ICE raids over the summer, they sent doctors and nurses to hundreds of patients' homes. CEO Jim Mangia remembers a 6-year-old suffering from days of asthma attacks at home because his parents were afraid to take him in.
JIM MANGIA: And by the time we got there, the odometer to check on his breathing oxygen level - and it was incredibly low, barely able to breathe.
OLGIN: He says hospitals and doctors have obligations to figure out how to treat patients no matter the circumstances.
MANGIA: I'm disappointed in the response of some in the health care community. And I also understand it's a very intimidating environment. If we're going to defeat the forces of darkness in this country, we have to fight.
OLGIN: According to friends and family, the Oregon parents have had to keep fighting for their daughter to get medical care in ICE detention. Darianny, the mother, told her sister Monday that Diana is still sick. The 7-year-old's stomach was still hurting. She was vomiting and had headaches. The mom says the doctor at the detention center has given her daughter Tylenol but no diagnostic tests. DHS did not respond to any questions about Diana Crespo's medical care.
For NPR News, I'm Alex Olgin in Portland, Oregon. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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