This week’s episode of The Pitt (on HBO and HBO Max in the U.S., on Crave in Canada) introduced the highly anticipated ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) storyline, continuing the show’s quest to tell real stories about healthcare workers’ experiences. As executive producer John Wells told “The Town with Matt Belloni,” the note he received from HBO was to make sure the storyline was “balanced” and “not just treating the situation as if it doesn’t have other points of view.”
About midway through the episode, while Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) is having a conversation with Dr. Cassie McKay (Fiona Dourif) about her treating an unhoused woman in the park, we hear him say “shit,” as two ICE agents, holding a woman named Pranita (Ramona DuBarry) by her arms, with a zip tie around her hands, come into the unit. They say that she took a “nasty fall” and hurt her shoulder, and she needs to be checked by a doctor before they process her.
Robby questions how she fell, and the agents say they were “conducting a sweep” at her restaurant, and while everyone in the kitchen took off, “she was shoved down some alley stairs.”
As Robby, Cassie, Victoria Javadi (Shabana Azeez) and nurse Jesse Van Horne (Ned Brower) assess Pranita’s range of motion, the ICE agents are watching over them. It’s determined that she needs an X-ray, but with the computer system down following the hack, Robby warns them that it could take some time.
Cassie offers to call someone for Pranita to update them on her injury, but the ICE agents say she can’t have any phone calls.
Speaking to Cassie in private, Robby says he wants ICE out of the hospital as quickly as possible and instructs her to fast-track the X-ray.
But in the waiting room, people who need medical care start leaving because they see ICE in the emergency department.
While charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) wants to just tell ICE to “fuck off,” Robby knows they won’t leave without their patient. And when the new nurse, Emma Nolan (Laëtitia Hollard), asks about treating an undocumented patient, Dana, stresses, “All patients, regardless of immigration status, have the right to emergency care under EMTALA [the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act].”
While Pranita is waiting to go to her X-ray, she says she just wants her daughter to know where she is, but the agents won’t allow it until she’s processed.
“Unbelievable,” Cassie says in response.
This is all happening as more patients are leaving and nurses are going home, because even though they have temporary protected status, they don’t feel safe.
Shabana Azeez, Josell Mariano, Fiona Dourif, JuJu Alexander, Noah Wyle, Ramona DuBarry in The Pitt (Warrick Page/HBO Max)
(Warrick Page/MAX)
Frustrated by the situation and seeing one of the agents at the nurses’ station, Robby says it’s time for them to go because they’ve been a “distraction” and a “disruption.”
“I just lost five nurses and half my environmental services team because you walked in,” Robby says, getting increasingly more emotional.
“You know, patients come in here for help, right? Because they’re either sick or they’re injured, and documented or undocumented, they have a right to emergency care. TB, measles, fractures, none of it’s getting treated because everybody’s too scared to come in. But then they end up here anyway. But then it’s too f—king late. So please, for the love of god, can you just wait over there in the room with your detainee so I don’t lose any more patients or staff?”
Visibly upset, the ICE agent goes to Pranita’s room and forcibly gets her to stand to leave. Jesse grabs him, saying that he’s hurting her, and the ICE agent pins Jesse to the ground and zip ties his hands.
As Jesse is being walked out of the hospital to be detained, Robby catches up to them and tells Jesse he doesn’t have to say anything, that they can’t force him to, and that he’ll get him an attorney to get him out.
“I can’t believe this shit,” Dana says, as she’s on the phone trying to get in touch with a hospital attorney, but they’re tied up with the cyberattacks.
Addressing the staff, Robby tells everyone to check on their patients and get back to work, with Perlah (Amielynn Abellera) taking Jesse’s patients.
Amplifying the timeliness of this week’s episode is that Ned Brower, who plays Jesse, is a real-life ER nurse, the only working medical professional who is a series regular on The Pitt, which adds more weight to this episode, as more health care workers call for ICE agents to get out of health care spaces.