{"id":536293,"date":"2026-03-21T07:32:35","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T07:32:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/536293\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T07:32:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T07:32:35","slug":"minnesota-health-care-workers-unite-for-better-patient-protection-amid-ice-crackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/536293\/","title":{"rendered":"Minnesota Health Care Workers Unite for Better Patient Protection Amid ICE Crackdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

This article is published in partnership with the Center for Media and Democracy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Department of Homeland Security\u2019s Operation Metro Surge may be winding down in Minneapolis, but its officers are still active in the city and state. At Fairview Health Services, one of the two largest health care networks in the Twin Cities, hospital administrators are resisting efforts by labor union leaders to establish clear protocols for ensuring that patients are protected from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, and that caregivers are able to do their jobs and provide all patients with the care they need.<\/p>\n

More from Matthew Cunningham-Cook<\/a><\/p>\n

The fight in the Twin Cities over how hospitals respond to ICE comes as the country confronts a lawless agency that has grown so rapidly that it is now the world\u2019s 13th-largest military force. The way hospitals choose to respond to ICE\u2019s actions will determine whether or not the estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the U.S. continue to get medical care in the coming years.<\/p>\n

On February 19, ICE agents arrested a Mexican immigrant named Adrian Sotelo Guzman in Minneapolis. Once he showed signs of extreme mental distress, they brought him to the emergency room at M Health Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina, an inner suburb of Minneapolis and the closest hospital to the Whipple Federal Building, where ICE operations are based. While Sotelo Guzman was awaiting a hearing<\/a> about the hospital\u2019s recommendation that he be civilly committed, ICE agents returned on February 27, removed him from the ER, and sent him to Montgomery Processing Center in Texas, which has routinely failed<\/a> to provide adequate mental health care to inmates. Fairview facilitated the transfer over the objection of its own health care providers. In recent legal filings, Sotelo Guzman\u2019s lawyers allege<\/a> that he was given powerful sedatives to facilitate his transfer, and his family has expressed concern about his well-being.<\/p>\n

\u201cHospitals are treating ICE and Customs and Border Protection detainees the same as people who have been arrested.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor weeks ICE has been present in and around hospitals in the Twin Cities,\u201d said Jill Lebrun, a registered nurse at M Health Fairview Riverside and treasurer of the Minnesota Nurses Association, at a February 20<\/a> press conference. The presence of federal immigration agents \u201cundermines trust and interferes with people seeking care. Every patient deserves to feel safe in our hospitals regardless of their immigration status. When patients are detained, that means fear. People delay care, avoid hospitals, they suffer in silence. When trust erodes, patient safety erodes with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The health care workers\u2019 proposed solution: clear policies that differentiate between ICE officers and local or state law enforcement, express regulations clarifying that ICE detainees are under administrative detention, and limit out-of-state transfers (as much as possible). So far, Fairview has resisted these demands from unions and community groups.<\/p>\n

Jamey Sharp, a medical student and organizer with the community group Unidos MN, told the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) that hospitals need to have separate policies for ICE and local law enforcement\u2014something that Fairview has resisted. \u201cIt\u2019s the biggest problem we face,\u201d he said\u2014that hospitals are treating ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detainees the same as people who have been arrested. \u201cIndividuals who are in ICE custody are under administrative civil detention. [But if] someone \u2026 is in the custody of Minneapolis police or the Hennepin County sheriff, they\u2019re in criminal custody. There are very defined laws about when someone is in criminal custody,\u201d including that the state can (and in some situations is required to) shackle them. \u201cNone of these [laws] apply to [people in] ICE civil detention.\u201d<\/p>\n

On March 10, Democratic members of the Minnesota Senate introduced SF 4242<\/a>, a bill that would limit ICE agents from accessing nonpublic areas of health care facilities without a judicial warrant, require hospitals to develop formal policies for immigration enforcement, and limit the amount of patient information that can be shared with immigration authorities.<\/p>\n

Unlike its main competitor in the region, Allina Health, or the dominant player in health care in Minnesota, the Mayo Clinic, Fairview is a quasi-public nonprofit network. It operates the University of Minnesota\u2019s hospitals under an affiliation agreement that was just renewed at the end of January, though the attorney general has the ability to review the terms. Both the dean of the University of Minnesota Medical Center (under the Fairview umbrella) and the university\u2019s vice president of health sciences, or their designees, are allowed to sit as ex officio members of Fairview\u2019s board of directors.<\/p>\n

The region\u2019s public hospital, Hennepin County Medical Center, has worked with community organizations to clearly delineate patients in ICE detention from those involved in criminal proceedings, receiving plaudits from unions and community groups like Unidos.<\/p>\n

In certain cases where ICE agents bring a patient to the hospital for care, \u201crights are being infringed on not just by ICE, but by hospitals as well,\u201d said Sharp. \u201cThe point is that these hospitals need to be ready and equipped [to uphold the] constitutional rights [of undocumented patients]. ICE [officers] can remain there as chaperones,\u201d but hospitals should not facilitate transfers to unsafe detention centers, Sharp argued.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur job first and foremost is the care and safety of our patients\u2014all our patients,\u201d said Kaitlin McLean, a medical resident at Fairview who helps lead the Committee of Interns and Residents union, at the February 20 press conference. \u201cUnfortunately, as we all know after the last several weeks, our communities have been impacted in ways we\u2019ve never imagined. Kids with infections waited until [the situation] was so severe it required an ICU stay. There are impacts on health that we may never be able to truly quantify for years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFederal immigration officials have been in these hospitals,\u201d McLean said. \u201cIt\u2019s beyond important that we have guidelines and policies that protect our staff and our nurses,\u201d as well as patients.<\/p>\n

In a statement, a Fairview spokesperson told CMD that while they are \u201cnot able to discuss details of a specific case or internal clinical decision-making \u2026 Fairview\u2019s hospitals and clinics provide care to anyone who needs it. We do not participate in civil immigration enforcement. Our policies are designed to protect patient privacy, support staff safety, and ensure that clinical teams determine when care is complete and when discharge is medically appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Fairview representative declined to address ICE specifically in the statement, nor did she respond to a request for comment about the organization\u2019s position on SF 4242.<\/p>\n

Fairview\u2019s board<\/a> also includes David Levy, who is the senior executive<\/a> in charge of government contracting<\/a> at Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS has received $64 million in payments from ICE since President Trump took office, according<\/a> to reporting by Forbes.<\/p>\n

\u201cFairview claims its vision is to be the most human-centered health care system [in the state],\u201d said Kirby Crow, a member of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa at Fairview, at the press conference. \u201cFairview\u2019s administration is not living up to that vision. ICE agents have covered up hospital security cameras in the ER, racially profiled workers, shackled patients, detained a worker, traumatized our patient population. For months we have carpooled with immigrant co-workers, joined neighborhood and school patrols, and administered mutual aid networks. Where was Fairview?\u201d<\/p>\n

Support for Adrian Sotelo Guzman is being collected via GoFundMe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article is published in partnership with the Center for Media and Democracy. The Department of Homeland Security\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[114963,130348,60034,12,97,2181,252,253,9447,2483,790,1929,240485,16950,6429,147193,23382,7126],"class_list":["post-536293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-cbp","tag-center-for-media-and-democracy","tag-cities-communities","tag-donald-trump","tag-health","tag-health-social-policy","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-hospitals","tag-ice","tag-immigration","tag-labor","tag-law-justice","tag-minneapolis","tag-minnesota","tag-policing","tag-state-legislatures","tag-unions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}